


Break a Bad Habit

by TheSovereigntyofReality



Series: Transcendent Souls [3]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enhanced Characters, Gen, Howard Stark Has A Heart, Peggy Carter Critical, Steve Rogers critical, Team Howard, Wakanda Critical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-05-16 20:19:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 34,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14818199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSovereigntyofReality/pseuds/TheSovereigntyofReality
Summary: A casual act of help towards Howard during the war leads him to seeking out the person who helped him after the war.This willneverbe Tony's problem.





	1. Neo Botha

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer: If you recognise it from somewhere else, it isn't mine.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> I'd like to explore the Transcendent Souls a bit more, so I wrote this. The idea is that all 12 gather and Thanos arrives early. But it'll be a while.

Howard had watched his flying car lift up, sustain flight, and actually travel.

His mind flashed back to when they were having trouble with the issue. _A black-skinned man had suddenly walked over, casually reached under the car, and pulled out a device – a device Howard had never seen before – and dropped it on the ground before seeming to vanish into thin air. The flying car had worked after that._

Howard had picked up the device and studied it extensively. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. It was powered by some form of energy but Howard quickly worked out it used vibranium (yes, it had vibranium in it) in the same way gold was used in a lot of technology around the place. The thing was that the vibranium was far more effective.

Curious, Howard had taken Steve’s shield, slightly reluctantly, stripped the paint and melted it down to see if the same effect could be produced. It had worked. He’d first used it in his flying car. Whereas before, the car had moved with severe turbulance, now it sailed through the air smoothly. Howard applied the vibranium to five other things (and he may have accidentally invented the cell phone in the process).

But that brought him back to the device.

Obviously, it was some kind of disrupter. Its purpose was to subvert the effectiveness of the flying car. Somebody hadn’t wanted Howard to invent the flying car. And somebody else had known about it. The disrupter had been clearly externally designed to blend in to the engine, and it was probably tucked away where Howard wouldn’t see it unless he took the engine apart (and might not even then) as evidenced by how the other man had reached in to get it. The next logical step was to find the man that had removed it.

His coloured skin made it easier than it would’ve been otherwise.

A few of the people in the area at the time had spoken to the man, and, though he’d kept to himself, he’d been employed (temporarily) as a cleaner. So the man’s name was documented.

Neo Botha.

Locating him was a bit harder. Turned out the guy had been a Morrocan paying his way home after the war. Tracking his journey was the easy part. Once you got to Morroco, though, it became difficult. Neo Botha, it turned out, was a man that kept to himself and didn’t talk to many people in an overcrowded city.

Those who did know him described him as apathic, never bothered by anything, and Howard got the feeling he was sort of nihilistic.

Eventually tracking down Botha’s family, Howard found out where the man worked. He was a maintenence worker at the airport – meaning Howard had walked right past him. Being a white millionaire meant that Howard could go and talk to him while he was working. At the time, Botha was repairing a leaking pipeline (so he guessed their maintence workers were jacks-of-all-trades). He glanced down at Howard in mild disinterest.

‘You were the guy with the flying car?’ he asked in accented, but perfect English.

‘Yeah,’ Howard said. ‘I worked out the device that you pulled off of it was, but I don’t know who put it there.’

‘Why do you think I know?’ Botha asked.

‘Because you knew exactly where to go to get it,’ Howard said. ‘I figure you know who did it and why they did it. Maybe you even worked for them once.’

Botha smirked. ‘Clever man. I can see how you got to where you are.’ He put the wrench aside, put his hand on the joint and yelled at someone in the local dialect. The water was turned on again and it appeared to be fixed. Botha tucked all his tools away. ‘Yes, I worked for them – ages ago.’ He paused and then muttered. ‘A lifetime, really.’ He shook his head. ‘I went in there out of curiosity over anything else. Have you ever heard of Wakanda?’

Howard slowly shook his head.

‘So where did you get the vibranium?’

‘First bit I found on the shoreline as a kid when my parents took me for a walk.’ It was a Sunday. He clearly remembered that. The one day they didn’t have to work, his parents had often dedicated to doing whatever he wanted to do. ‘My mother said she’d never seen anything like it before, so we kept it. It was only later I got more and I found out what it was called from the...vendor.’

Botha looked at him knowingly. ‘Black market?’ At Howard’s startled look, he grinned. ‘Don’t worry. Vibranium can _only_ be bought on the black market. I’m hardly surprised that’s where you got it.’ Botha pointed. ‘Wakanda is a small, isolated country on the Eastern Coast.’

‘Isolated?’ Howard asked.

‘Kinda.’ Botha pulled a face. ‘Outsiders aren’t allowed in but Wakandans can come and go as they please. While the outskirts puts up the illusion of just as much poverty as the rest of this continent, they are actually stinking rich. They are, in actual fact, the most technologically advanced nation in the world.’

That boggled the mind. If they were isolated, how did they develop their technology: radars, satellites, things that came from war? An isolated nation could only possibly have civil wars. The question must’ve been painted on his face because Botha answered it.

‘The reason they can exist like this is because of vibranium,’ he said. ‘It came to Earth in the form of a meteor and crashed smack-bang into Wakanda. While the metal is rare everywhere else, it is abundant in Wakanda. You’re a scientist, so I imagine you tested vibranium’s technological potential.’

‘I did,’ Howard said. ‘I made some things I could only dream of before.’

‘Exactly. They used it to advance their technology, which, in turn, advanced their science. Along came the period of colonisation. Rather than face the same as their neighbours, they erected a force-field around their country, cutting themselves off from the rest of the world. Over time – I don’t know precisely when – they grew an impressive hubris. They now _think_ they’re better than the rest of the world.’

‘I don’t even know how they function. I mean, the economy alone seems like it should collapse in on itself. How the hell could they be rich?’

‘They use a different currency system. The rest of us use fiat money. They use commodity money.’

‘You mean...?’

‘They exchange small disks of vibranium as currency. And a single coin could buy the groceries for a large family. Smaller things are often bought by exchanging goods rather than coin.’

‘So...basically Roman era stuff?’

‘Yup.’ Botha chuckled. ‘Really, the only thing advanced about them is their technology and science. Everything else is primitive, despite their opinions.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They still decide the Head of State by bloodline and, if there’s a challenge, by combat. And they hold the belief that guns are primitive. They primarily use _spears_ , by the way.’

Howard snorted.

‘Yeah,’ Botha said.

‘Wait,’ Howard said. ‘You said the Wakandans come and go as they like? How the hell do they pay for that if their money system is completely different?’

‘They have this place they call the Fiat Department. I call it the Counterfeit Department.’

Howard’s eyes narrowed. ‘They make counterfeit money for every other country on the planet?’

Botha shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that was a contributing factor to the Great Depression.’

Howard humphed. ‘So what do they do when they come out here?’

‘Exactly what they did to your flying car. They make sure the rest of the world doesn’t catch up. I’ll be honest. They’re technologically advanced, but they also think they’re perfect. They don’t make too many advancements anymore. The only time that happens is when a high-status person is born with high intellect and an interest in tweaking what’s already there. As you can imagine, that doesn’t happen very often.’

‘How do you track them then?’ Howard asked. ‘If they’re coming out here to sabotage the rest of the world so we don’t catch up, they must have better spy tactics than us.’

‘Not really,’ Botha said. ‘They’re all coloured, though, so they tend to settle in more menial jobs in your part of the world. And they do slip up, occassionally using words from their native tongue. I can give you a list of words they use. Oh.’ He lifted a finger. ‘They’re also the only dark-skinned janitors, street cleaners, gardeners, and shop attendents who will exude condescension. Seriously, you can spot them a mile away once you know what to look for.’

‘So why tell me what to look for?’ Howard asked.

‘Because when I was there I had more than enough of their smarmy arrogance and I want to see them come down a peg or two,’ Botha said. ‘They stand there, living their extravagant lifestyles while the rest of Africa struggles in poverty, and they don’t lift a finger to help – not even the children. Not because they can’t, but because they won’t. They chose to respond to the colonisation of Africa by running away, and yet they think themselves above the rest of humankind simply because theirs is the country where one meteor happened to fall. This disparage all of us, and yet offer nothing. They kill their own kinsmen who dare care about the outside world. They come out into our society, steal our idea, sabotage our developments, and induce this...fear of intelligence in order to maintain this illusion of superiority.’

All of this he said without the slightest shift in expression.

‘Fear of intelligence?’ Howard asked.

‘How many times, Mr. Stark, have you been told something you want to try is too dangerous or unsavoury?’ Botha asked.

Howard winced.

Botha nodded. ‘That is the fear of intelligence; society’s nervousness about people who push the boundaries to see what can be done. The idea, for example, that man was not meant to fly. The Wright brothers had each others’ back and took us into the air, despite the best efforts of the Wakandans. Cars are not meant to fly?’ Botha scoffed. ‘Wakanda has had flying cars for _years_.’

Howard suddenly felt a thrill of excitement. ‘So all this “man is not supposed to” stuff is just the Wakandans not wanting us to catch up?’

‘Yup.’

Howard looked delightful.

‘There is one other thing, though,’ Botha said. ‘Something I wanted to ask you, and the other reason I stopped to help you.’

‘Yeah.’ Well, he’d told him about this. The least Howard could do was listen to his question.

‘You have the Tesseract, don’t you?’

‘Yeah. Why?’

‘We had somebody infiltrating HYDRA,’ Botha said. ‘They reported something about the Tesseract. Whatever it was, it seemed to indicate an extinction-level event.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘One of our number is American. We’d like to send her to have a look at it and try to work out what’s going on there.’

‘Who?’

‘Her name’s Miriam Cassidy. She was a schoolteacher prior to marriage and returned to the classroom during the Depression. She currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, Miriam is going to give quite the eye-opener on who Steve was in her classroom.
> 
> I don't remember if Howard ever mentioned Wakanda in CA:TFA or if he just explained what vibranium was. If he did know about Wakanda back then, I'm claiming artistic licence. :)
> 
> There will be more coming, so hang on. ;)


	2. Miriam Cassidy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Howard gets the Tesseract and calls in Neo's friend.

Telling Col. Phillips about what he’d learned had actually gotten the Tesseract delivered to Howard’s lab with minimal fuss. It’d helped that Howard had caught the Wakandan spies slinking around his office building as janitorial staff. Neo was right. When you knew what to look for, they stuck out like a sore thumb.

And their hubris was hilarious.

The stoic (not nervous, not worried – stoic) faces had cracked in to utter shock when Howard had presented them to Phillips as _Wakandan_ spies. One of them had even slipped up and demanded “how can you know that?”, which had only confirmed it. So there were a lot of people not very happy with the isolated nation at the moment.

Phillips had, as a consequence of the incident, taken everything Howard had reported from Neo seriously. He’d released the Tesseract into Howard’s hands, in top confidentiallity, for research purposes. With that done, Howard had sat down and written a letter, after securing the address of Mr. and Mrs. Cassidy of Brooklyn. They weren’t that hard to find. He was a construction worker who’d spent most of the Depression working on and off, and she’d called in favours to get a steady job at the local school.

Given that a lot of schools shut down during the Depression, this was, of course, the only one in the area that’d managed to stay open. Which meant, she was more likely than not familiar with Steve and Bucky. There was an interesting thought. Still, Howard sent the letter and he recieved the phone call a few days later.

On his invitation, the Cassidys arrived the very next week.

Jonathan Cassidy was a bit rough around the edges but he was a friendly guy. Miriam Cassidy was a tall woman with greying dark brown hair and brown eyes. Both of them were somewhere in their fifties. Howard took them down into a bunker he’d built specifically to hide things he didn’t want other people to get their hands on. The entire room was bathed in a blue glow from the Tesseract which sat in the glass underneath.

Mrs. Cassidy walked over and crouched down to look. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘In the Arctic,’ Howard said. ‘The Red Skull had it first. According to Steve, he picked it up and was disintegrated.’

‘Hm.’ Mrs. Cassidy twisted her lips. ‘I’d take that with a grain of salt if I were you. Young Mr. Rogers was very good at misinterpreting words, actions, and events.’

So it was likely he could have been mistaken about what happened.

She looked back at him. ‘Besides, you’re the scientist. Do you know what it does?’

‘As far as I can tell, it seems to be a self-sustaining energy source,’ Howard said. He huffed. ‘I’d love to reverse engineer it. It’d be so cost-efficient to power my company on something like this.’

‘Well,’ Mrs. Cassidy straightened up, ‘according to Neo, you have vibranium, so you probably could do it. Meanwhile, I’ll need your notes on this.’

Howard nodded with a thoughtful look.

***

Jarvis was surprised to step into the study.

There was a man (he recalled that Mr. Stark had him set up the guest bedroom for some guests) sitting in the armchair in the room, reading a book of some description. Mr. Stark and a dark-haired woman, on the other hand, were leaning over something on the desk, talking quickly. It didn’t make an awful lot of sense to Jarvis. Either way, they’d clearly come in while he was out. Mr. and Mrs. Cassidy, if he recalled correctly.

‘Sir, Miss Carter is here,’ he said. ‘She’s asking about the Wakanda issue.’

‘What did you tell her?’ Mr. Stark asked, not looking up from whatever he and Mrs. Cassidy were looking at.

‘Well, all I know is that they pretended to be impoverished while boasting the most advanced technology on the planet and preventing the rest of the world from catching up.’ He pulled a face. ‘She wants more data.’

‘What more can she need?’ Mrs. Cassidy asked. ‘She’s not in charge of the SSR. She’s not responsible for weeding them out.’

Jarvis was startled by such a remark. ‘I was under the impression that was the job of every agent in an intelligence agency.’

‘If they catch them in the act, certainly,’ Mrs. Cassidy said. ‘But once people start actively looking for spies, they’ll begin seeing them under every rock. They may even end up accussing perfectly innocent people of being the spies. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if when the ball really gets rolling they start sacking every person of African descent they have on their payroll.’

Jarvis had been startled by her coarse language – especially considering she was supposed to have been a schoolteacher – but her remark about people being sacked for the colour of their skin got his attention. He remembered people had certainly held Dr. Wilkes’s skin colour against him so it wasn’t that strange to think that other people like him would be held in suspicion for the same reasons.

‘I’m quite certain Miss Carter wouldn’t be so quick to judge,’ Jarvis said.

‘I’m quite certain if she was meant to know anything about it, she would have been briefed,’ Mrs. Cassidy shot back without missing a beat. ‘Trust me, she already knows all she needs to know.’

Jarvis pressed his lips together and turned away. Miss Carter was not going to like this. Still, he walked down to where she was waiting. Sure enough, as soon as he came into her view, her expression twisted in annoyance.

‘Where’s Howard?’ she demanded.

‘I’m afriad he’s entertaining at the moment.’ Jarvis felt bad for lying, and he hoped it was forgivable, but it was preferable to telling her that he’d been told she had no business coming to Mr. Stark for this matter.

‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake!’ Miss Carter rolled her eyes. She then took a deep breath. As she always did, she made a quick decision on her next move. ‘Then I’ll return first thing in the morning, Mr. Jarvis.’

Jarvis nodded. ‘Shall I set a place for you at breakfast, Miss Carter?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ Miss Carter said. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

She let herself out of the house.

***

When Mr. Jarvis returned to tell them Miss Carter would be joining them for breakfast in the morning, Miriam began to suspect it.

 _Well,_ she thought, _I’ll confirm it in the morning._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I found this a few days ago. I just _had_ to share.
> 
> https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7d/81/d3/7d81d317a0ea093c9dcef5fa5b721877.jpg
> 
> If that's the ashes of Thanos's snap then, yes. Not funny.
> 
> If it's Tony making Steve clean up after himself for once, then it's hilarious.
> 
> Yes, I'm still salty. Can you tell?


	3. New Perspective

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miriam Cassidy offers up a new perspective on Steve Rogers.

Jarvis showed Miss Carter out to the patio.

Mr. and Mrs. Cassidy were chatting to Mr. Stark. Mr. Cassidy was talking about his concerns with this “vacation” taking him out of work for a while. Mr. Stark was currently talking about places he could get him work – quite a few SI properties in the city were under construction. One more man wouldn’t hurt anything. That, and Mr. Cassidy seemed determined that they couldn’t just spend the whole time in Mr. Stark’s mansion without a repayment of some sort.

Mr. Stark had already organised a sum of rent, because he did keep insisting.

It did make Jarvis wonder, however. It was the first time he’d seen someone, in a social situation, insist upon repaying Mr. Stark’s hospitality in some form. Usually, Mr. Stark just invited people to stay in his home, they accepted and stayed for a while and that was that. They did not offer rent, they did not insist upon helping clean up the place or cook the meals, as Mrs. Cassidy had done. Even Miss Carter did not extend what was, now that he considered it, a basic courtesy.

Mr. Stark looked up as they came in. ‘Morning, Peg.’ He turned to his guests. ‘Peggy Carter, John and Miriam Cassidy.’

Mrs. Cassidy gave a sangurine smile. ‘Miss Carter. Please sit.’

Jarvis didn’t know why, but Mr. Stark grinned in an odd kind of way as he himself sat. Miss Carter took her seat. She didn’t beat around the bush, but she’d never been the kind to do so. Jarvis was almost afraid for her. It might have had something to do with Mrs. Cassidy’s reaction to hearing Miss Carter was coming around for breakfast.

_‘Okay,’ she’d said. ‘How did this development come about?’_

_‘She would like to discuss the Wakandan spy issue with Mr. Stark over breakfast,’ Jarvis had said_

_‘So she invited herself over to breakfast?’ Mr. Cassidy asked sceptically._

_Jarvis had frozen, unsure how to respond. In truth, she rather had._

_Mrs. Cassidy showed how she’d been a schoolteacher in that moment by reading the answer from his face and clicking her tongue. ‘I was under the impression that it was bad form to force someone to host you in their own home. After all, that’s what the third Amendment is all about.’_

Jarvis was not familiar enough with the American Constitution to understand what she meant. He’d been meaning to ask Mr. Stark about it but hadn’t yet had the opportunity.

Now, Miss Carter asked, ‘Where are you from?’

‘Brooklyn,’ Mrs. Cassidy said, immediately gaining Miss Carter’s interest.

Of course, this was the place where Captain Rogers had come from.

‘My wife’s a schoolteacher,’ Mr. Cassidy said. Whatever they were leading up to seemed to be a coordinated effort.

‘Really?’ Peg asked. ‘Did you ever teach Steve?’

Mrs. Cassidy’s eyes glittered. ‘I’ve taught a lot of Steves. You’ll have to be a little bit more specific, Miss Carter.’

Jarvis could tell she was being intentionally obtuse. She knew precisely which Steve Miss Carter was talking about. There had been some conversation on the Captain in the time they’d been here. Miss Carter wasn’t to know that. She took the question entirely seriously. Jarvis wondered if she’d even noticed the fact that the former schoolteacher was picking on her.

‘Steve Rogers,’ Miss Carter said. ‘He became Captain America.’ As if to jog her memory.

‘Rogers, Rogers.’ Mrs. Cassidy leaned back. ‘About the size of a twelve year old? Blond hair? Blue eyes? Tried to enlist five times before he got spotted and picked out by a German scientist for Project Rebirth.’

‘Yes, that’s him,’ Peg said. ‘You taught him?’

‘Geography, yes.’ She pulled a face. ‘Or I tried to.’

‘I suppose he missed a lot of class,’ Miss Carter said with a smile. ‘He was very sickly, after all.’

Mrs. Cassidy gave her a wry smirk. ‘That wasn’t the problem.’

Now Miss Carter looked confused. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Mrs. Cassidy shrugged with a look of honest-to-God befuddlement. ‘We used to send the reading with Bucky Barnes whenever Mr. Rogers missed out on class but he clearly never touched those books.’

‘Really?’ Mr. Stark asked. ‘I think it’d be something to do while he was bed-bound.’

‘Maybe he didn’t understand the content,’ Miss Carter suggested, her tone becoming defensive.

‘We offered to tutor him when he did come to school,’ Mrs. Cassidy said. ‘He refused to show up.’

Mr. Stark raised an inquisitive eyebrow. ‘Why?’

‘He felt we were treating him like he was stupid,’ Mrs. Cassidy said. ‘He didn’t like being considered stupid, but he wasn’t willing to put in the work to correct his ignorance.’

‘Steve Rogers was a credit to this nation!’ Miss Carter insisted. Now she was really defensive. ‘He was a good man!’

‘He was a petulant brat,’ Mrs. Cassidy said, completely calm. ‘Any day he wasn’t sent to the principal’s office was a good day for him.’

‘Really?’ Howard asked curiously. ‘So it happened a lot?’

‘Principal Trenton had a special chair set aside for him.’

Yes. It happened a lot.

‘That’s funny,’ Mr. Stark mused. ‘I was a disruptive kid and I was never sent to the principal’s office.’

Mrs. Cassidy smiled at him. ‘There are two types of disruptive kids: the highly intelligent and the unmotivated. Highly intelligent students, such as you yourself would have been, are disruptive because they finished early and are, consequently, bored. That’s easy to fix: give them something to do – most often, help another student who is stuggling with the content.’ She lifted a finger and silenced Miss Carter before she could say anything.

 _She really is a schoolteacher,_ Jarvis mused.

‘The second type,’ Mrs. Cassidy said, ‘is the category that Mr. Rogers fell into: the unmotivated. He was disruptive because he did not want to learn. He didn’t understand the content and viewed it as too hard so, rather than suffer what he considered the indignity of asking for help, he consistently disrupted the class.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ Miss Carter insisted. ‘Steve was a model American!’

‘Steve was called “chihauhau” by his peers behind his back,’ Mrs. Cassidy said.

‘So he was right about the bullies then!’ Miss Carter had the look of someone who thought she’d come out on top.

‘Oh, please!’ Mrs. Cassidy scoffed. ‘He didn’t get into fist-fights because he was being bullied. He got into fist-fights because he couldn’t handle being disagreed with. I can see you had a thing for him, so I’ll say this once and I’ll say it clear: Steve Rogers was an agressive little twit who could only deal with his problems through violence. In Brooklyn, it was viewed as scrappy, if not a bit annoying. He generally did more harm to himself than whoever he attacked. He was sick as a dog and we all went easy on him because no one expected him to live into adulthood.’ She pointed a finger at Miss Carter. ‘But if any other child acted like that, they’d have gotten the strap. There were times I was tempted, I’ll certainly say. A good belting might have knocked him into line, but no one wanted to give his poor mother more medical bills that she couldn’t afford. God knows that entitled brat of hers never stopped to think about it.’

Miss Carter looked offended.

Mr. Stark, on the other hand, looked intrigued. ‘Can you elaborate on that?’

Mrs. Cassidy turned to him. ‘Any time Mr. Rogers encountered a problem, he tried to punch it – whether that be an issue or a differing opinion, it didn’t matter. He ended with going to the hospital every other week. His mother was a nurse, so she did get special allowances but only for the medical expenses. Otherwise, she had to pay just as much as anyone else. Do you realise how low a nurse’s wage was during the Depression? The only reason they kept that apartment they were in was because all their neighbours pitched in to help – and that was the same reason Mr. Barnes kept interfering with the fights Mr. Rogers kept going around and picking. His mother wouldn’t have been able to afford the fees she would have incurred if he’d needed his bones reset.’

‘I’m sure Steve had good reasons—’ Miss Carter began but Mr. Cassidy interrupted her.

‘Like what?’

Miss Carter froze and glared at him. There was something about the whole thing which seemed surreal. Miss Carter was clearly in the wrong here. If Mrs. Cassidy was telling the truth then it was no wonder she and her husband were unimpressed by Captain Rogers. Even Mr. Stark seemed to be taking them seriously, judging from the curious and thoughtful look on his face.

‘Precisely,’ Mrs. Cassidy said. ‘Now, are you going to continue defending someone you only knew for a handful of months and developed romantic feelings for, or are you going to come to the point of this little display of British imperialism?’

‘Don’t pretend this is about my feelings!’ Miss Carter snapped.

Mrs. Cassidy looked her in the eye and said without a change or tone and without blinking. ‘Don’t pretend it isn’t.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the many things that bothered me in Agent Carter was when Peg and Howard were arguing about Steve's blood (and, yes, that will be addressed in this fic) Peg was all "don't pretend this is about me and my feelings".
> 
> Who do you think you're kidding, Peg? He wanted to use the blood to help cure people; to save people. Your anger at it _was_ about your feelings!
> 
> I really wanted someone to call her out on that.


	4. Further Study Required

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miriam takes some time to consider.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's short and sweet because it's more of an introspection chapter to see what's in Miriam's head.

Miriam sat at the table, looking over all the data of the Tesseract.

There wasn’t a lot known about it. What they did know came from two sources: Howard, and Otto. While Otto knew more, he had a larger problem. He had to be very careful with his communications. He sat in absolute proof that HYDRA was still around. He was currently spying on them.

To say Howard hadn’t been impressed to find out that Leviathan didn’t really exist and it was just the espionage equivalent of a dummy company would be putting it mildly.  
Miriam wasn’t really surprised, to be honest. Just because their philosophy wasn’t all sunshine and roses it was no reason to assume they didn’t have contingency plans. America had made the mistake of thinking that just because the Nazis were defeated, that HYDRA was gone. As any educated person ought to know, though: ideas don’t die.

Even the ideals of the Nazis were not original. They had been used and fought for before. It was simply that no one had ever gone quite so far before. Not one had ever held such delusions of granduer before and been given the power that Hitler had (you know, back when you only got that level of power either by being born into it or by conquest).

_Speaking of delusions of granduer..._

Looking around now, Miriam felt guilty for the way things turned out. Howard had needed to be told about Steve’s uncanny ability to make everything that came out of his mouth sound like it was the truth. The serum had certainly enhanced him. It’d enhanced that too – turning it to him being able to make everything that came out of his mouth sound like an undeniable truth.

 _‘The thing about Steve,’_ Miriam had had to explain to Howard, _‘was that he was always so certain that he was right – that he was in the right. It’s a pity he didn’t pour more effort into his studies. He had to potential to be highly intelligent if he put the effort in.’_

_‘If he put the effort in...?’ Howard trailed off._

_Miriam laughed. ‘He could make everything he did and everything he said sound justified, like he really did have the moral high ground. Do you know how hard that is? Making yourself sound right to people who have heard every excuse under the sun for bad behaviour?’_

It took a lot of intelligence. Steve hadn’t been stupid, just lazy.

The same could be said for Peggy Carter. She wasn’t stupid. Oh, no. Far from it. She knew how she was viewed in society and, while raging against it, she also used it to her advantage. She used it as a weapon (albeit differently from how it was usually used, including by Miriam herself). She could work things out quicker than the people around her. However, she was too lazy to _think_ her way out of conflicts. She resorted to violence because it was easier.

Jarvis had told Miriam about the story of Whitney Frost.

Miriam was still trying to wrap her head around the sheer foolishness of head-on attacking a woman you _knew_ to be vastly stronger than you.

Lord above, those two really were cut from the same cloth.

While she wasn’t dealing with children, old instincts were hard to kick. Miriam knew that Howard was surrounded with people who feared his intelligence and so desired to place him on the metaphorical leash. Yet, like all those who came before him, he could not see it. She felt the need to guide him out of that situation so he could step back and see it himself.

Peg reminded her greatly of a malcontented child who needed to calm down and take a good, hard look at herself. She was someone who was in an unfair situation (a fully capable and strong woman who was held back by various men who brought into the sterotypes – even if it was now mostly in her head). She needed to step back and see how her actions were actually affecting those around her.

Jarvis was the one whose mother guided his every step and then let him out into the big, bad world, woefully unprepared. He mistook the things around him for what they were not based on a simplistic world view. He was far too easily impressed and appalled. He needed to learn to stop seeing the world in black and white, but in shades of grey.

They were not children, but they did need help.

And Transcendent Souls were excellent at multitasking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, I'd like to say I know where we're going to end up but I have no idea how I'm getting there. I'm literally just making this up as I go. X)
> 
> Right now I'm sort of hitting the wall that is Writer's Block.
> 
> Suggestions to help my plot bunnies would be welcome.


	5. The Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peg tries to get into the meeting on Wakanda's spying.
> 
> The Cassidys find out about Steve's blood.

‘So what is this hoo-hah?’ John asked as he struggled with his bow tie.

‘A delegation disguised as a party so the big wigs can get in a room together and discuss the Wakandan issue without any prying Wakandan ears.’ Miriam stepped around and did the tie up for him. ‘Apparently, they’ve decided that nothing important ever gets discussed in parties. Even if the spies did get in, Howard’s already developed a bug-detector using the vibranium from that shield.’

‘So they’ll know if the room is monitored and be able to take the bugs down,’ John said. ‘And the more Wakandan tech Howard gets his hands on, the more vibranium he has.’ He grinned. ‘He might even find a way to construct a synthetic substitute.’

‘Quite likely.’

John sighed as his wife took him out of the room Howard had provided them with. They headed downstairs to join Howard in the car that Jarvis was driving them to the party in. Howard had really invited them as sort of a “thank you” for letting him (and as a result, the intelligence community) know that HYDRA was still running about.

The party itself was high-class and John felt entirely out of his depth. Being married to Miriam, though, had many advantages. One of which was learning how to bluff your way through anything. Nobody seemed to even pick up an inkling of what he did for a living. John was actually having a good time.

That was until Miriam turned her head with a slight frown.

‘What’s the matter?’ John asked.

‘Howard’s started feeling agitated,’ Miriam said quietly. ‘He’s beginning to become stressed and worried. I think Miss Carter’s just snuck in.’

‘I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say the emotions opposite him are...?’ John paused. He was no empath so he had no clue what kind of emotions accompanied the attitude he’d seen in Miss Carter thus far.

‘Self-righteous indignation,’ Miriam said. ‘And Jarvis is confused and nervous.’ She started leading him towards the edge of the party. ‘But Jarvis is always nervous in one way or another.’

John followed his wife out of the party room to the hallway where the meeting rooms were located. Peggy Carter’s voice, passionate, determined, and sounding rather like someone used to getting their way, carried across the hallway as they entered.

‘—I have a right to know about these proceedings!’

Miriam interrupted whatever Howard was about to say. ‘Not if you haven’t been given the clearance, you don’t.’

John was not impressed to note the relief on Howard’s face as Carter spun around, expression indignant. He’d seen that look before (the one on Howard’s face), generally in his own children when they were in over their heads and they needed help but didn’t know how to ask for it. John cast a glare at Jarvis, causing the man to wince. Well, good. Howard Stark was both his employer and the man who’d saved the lives of both himself and his wife – that story had been really touching. The very least he could do was support the man.

Carter lifted her chin, looking a little too prideful for John’s taste. ‘How do you know I haven’t got clearance?’

‘You’d hardly be trying to strongarm Mr. Stark into letting you into the meeting if you did, would you?’

‘I am not strongarming him!’ Miss Carter insisted.

Miriam gave her one of the many looks she had mastered over the years. This particular one was utilised when a student told her a lie, and Miriam knew it was a lie. The look on her face was the way she told the person before her that her lie was extremely unconvincing. It seemed being an adult made no difference. Carter’s face did this strange little twist.

‘It’s no concern of yours!’ she snapped.

‘As this meeting is no concern of yours,’ Miriam said.

‘I am a government agent!’ Miss Carter snapped.

‘Yes, an _agent_.’ Miriam’s tone brooked no argument – ordinarily. ‘You take orders and complete missions. You do not take matters into your own hands without telling your superiors. I certainly hope I don’t have to explain this to a trained federal agent.’

Carter drew back. She seemed to fish for a moment. The moment stretched on. John noticed the anxiousness fade from Howard’s face, and he was now looking curious. Which meant that Miriam was exercising her...favourite trick when dealing with certain types of people. The thought almost made John smile wryly.

When Miriam and the others like her got together, they liked to discuss the morality and limitations of such things.

Miss Carter evidently decided to change tactics. ‘I need to be sure everything going on in there is satisfactory,’ she said.

‘Satisfactory, how?’ Miriam asked, folding her arms and moving her weight onto her left leg.

‘How do I know they’re not planning to use Wakanda’s secrets to line their pockets?’ Miss Carter demanded.

‘And what makes you think they would do such a thing?’

As this went on, Howard’s eyebrows were creeping higher and higher up his forehead.

Poor Jarvis looked completely out of his depth.

‘Howard’s actions with the blood, for one.’ Carter suddenly flinched back, as if she only just realised that she wouldn’t normally answer these questions.

Miriam’s eyes narrowed. ‘What blood?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Carter said that a little too quickly. She went to turn back to Howard.

‘What—’ Miriam grabbed her arm and turned her back around. ‘Blood?’

‘I said it doesn’t matter.’ Even though she was clearly trying for forceful, it didn’t come out that way.

Miriam gave a pointed look at Jarvis.

‘Mr. Stark had some blood of Captain Rogers,’ Jarvis said.

Miriam lifted an eyebrow. She turned her attention to Howard. ‘What was your intention with the blood?’

‘Well, you saw Steve before,’ Howard said, sounding like the only one she hadn’t actually affected. ‘After we injected him, it was all gone. I thought if we could isolate that, we could save millions of people.’

John’s mind immediately grasped onto the idea. His mind flashed back to years ago, and he found that he immediately loved the idea.

Then Carter scoffed. ‘Steve Rogers gave his life to protect this country, Howard, not so you could line your pockets.’

‘What happened to the blood?’ Miriam asked, voice low and deadly.

Carter apparently missed it. ‘I threw it out. As I said—’

_THWACK!_

She never got the chance to repeat herself. Miriam threw her fist into the younger woman’s face. Carter flew across and sailed into a wall. She then bounced off the wall and hit the floor. Jarvis jumped and even Howard looked alarmed. Carter’s nose poured blood. Miriam glowered at her, though, far outshining the glare Carter had for her.

‘They have a special pit in hell for you,’ Miriam just about snarled.

She turned on her heel and marched out. John stopped only to glare at Peg, who seemed quite offended that someone who suggest such a thing after slugging her. ‘We had a child that died of rheumatic fever,’ he said. ‘He was three. So of course your utter disregard for children like that would enrage us.’ He looked at Howard, whose confusion had cleared into remorseful acceptance. ‘We’ll see you later.’

Howard nodded. ‘See you at the house.’ He walked into the meeting room.

John turned his back on Peggy Carter’s horrified expression and walked after his wife.

***

Jarvis handed Miss Carter a damp face cloth.

Miss Carter immediately got to cleaning to blood from her face. Apparently, despite the apparent fragility of Mrs. Cassidy, she still packed enough of a punch to draw blood. Jarvis was also rather certain there was some bruising beginning to form. Jarvis wanted to say it was uncalled for but...was it really?

He wondered.

‘They think I don’t care,’ Miss Carter muttered.

Most likely she was muttering to herself, but Jarvis asked anyway. ‘About what?’

‘About their child!’ Miss Carter sounded agitated. ‘They think I don’t care that a child died at that age. I do, but why would they think I don’t?’

The sad truth was that children did die in such ways and it had never occurred to Jarvis that Captain America’s blood could have helped save those lives. The fact was that it was reasonable to think that Miss Carter had never spared a thought for those children – they had certainly never crossed Jarvis’s mind when he made the decision to hand the blood over to her, he was ashamed to say.

And it made Jarvis uncomfortable to think of his part in the whole thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My father actually had rheumatic fever as a toddler, and there was only medication there that he could take - which was what he had. This was in 1963/64, so I very much doubt there were any in the 20s or 30s, when I imagine this happened to the Cassidys' child.


	6. Consider This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation between Howard and Miriam leads to revelations.

In all honesty, it didn’t make a lot of sense.

Peg had been angry when she’d been demanding Howard let her into that meeting, right up until Miriam and John had walked in. Then it was like the anger was sucked right out of her. She’d also answered Miriam’s questions a whole lot easier than he’d ever seen an answer be extracted from her before. It was almost like she’d suddenly calmed down and become amicable enough to answer.

That can’t have happened by itself.

At the same time, Howard knew if there was anything like what he was thinking, it wasn’t something someone would just freely talk about. Part of him thought it might have been John, but he did actually notice people. And he noticed who wore the pants in that particular relationship. It seemed much more likely, to him, that Miriam was the one who did it.

That confidence last night in approaching such a...touchy situation certainly spoke for something.

Howard stepped into the bunker. The blue glow was thrown on Miriam’s face as she worked around the artefact. For a geography teacher, she sure had a clear concept of the scientific method. She even had a small phone down here which she used to call various people she knew for help or advice.

Howard knew she had a network of some kind, but he didn’t know who they were. Honestly, though, it was really none of his business. What he came down for was something else altogether. Miriam glanced up as he walked in. It was probably better to bring this up now, when she’d had time to cool down.

‘John mentioned your kid after you left,’ he said as a way to start.

‘Nothing could have saved him then,’ Miriam said in a subdued voice. ‘But in the future...well, what gave her the right to decide that you couldn’t at least _try_?’

Howard pressed his lips together. It was a good question, and not one he had an answer for. He, personally, had never had someone in his family die in this way. He had seen it when he was growing up, certainly. A lot of their neighbours had lost children, wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, and cousins to some sort of disease. Howard had seen the impact it had on them, both as the individual was dying and when they eventually did die.

It was part of what had given him the idea in the first place.

‘You know you’re the first one I’ve heard to suggest that,’ Howard remarked.

‘Hm.’ Miriam looked him in the eye. ‘What did your mother do, Howard?’

‘What’d she do?’ The question threw him, but Howard figured it was asked for a particular reason. Miriam never asked questions without a reason – like any teacher, really. ‘She sewed buttons onto waistcoats.’

Miriam nodded. ‘You know that nice thing about Brits? You can always tell their socio-economic class by their accents. I think it’s an after-effect of their imperialistic days. I can tell you right now that Edwin Jarvis and Peggy Carter both came from middle-class families.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Howard asked.

‘People in middle-class households don’t have to put up with the chill, the vermin, and the overall abject poverty that you grew up with. When they get sick, their mothers can stay at home and look after them. When you got sick, your mother would not have been able to afford to do as such. The survival rate in those areas is much higher. The more...fortunate children would hear about people dying of disease but they would have only been affected by such things if they themselves, or one of their friends, siblings, or cousins was the victim of such an illness. From the way both Mr. Jarvis and Miss Carter dismissed your endeavour with the blood, I would say they have _not_ suffered such a thing.’

Howard frowned. He didn’t know if that was true, but it did seem to be an educated guess. ‘I’d think adults would be able to absorb that concept.’

‘People as a whole cannot properly absorb concepts they have no experience with,’ Miriam said. ‘It’s a sad fact, but it’s there. If it became public what you intended to do with the blood and what happened to it, the masses would turn on Carter quicker than you could say “Bob’s your uncle”.’

Yeah, they probably would.

‘That’s what’s hard, though,’ Howard said. ‘I’ve had to go through life not caring what people think of me, but I do care what Peg thinks.’

‘Well, stop it,’ Miriam told him. ‘The woman is hyper-critical and already thinks of you as a greedy, ruthless businessman who is occasionally useful. I’ve only met her twice and I know that.’

Howard paused, pressing his lips together. Ever since he was a little boy, his mother had said to him, _‘The teacher is not your enemy. A teacher’s job is to find the most effective way for each child to learn. Out of everybody in that classroom, they care about you the most.’_

Sure, it was a very generalised statement (and his mother would have known that) that had only been applicable to the best teachers. Yet, Miriam was clearly one of these teachers. He remembered how he could always tell them when he was growing up. Those had been the teachers that noticed how bored he was with the work and found him advanced work because he was so far ahead of everyone else.

Miriam clearly saw the problem. She sat back in her seat. ‘I’ll tell you what, Howard. Why don’t you get a bit of paper and go and have a little think. On one side, list every time Peg praised you and, on the other, every time she criticised you. When you finished, look at the shorter list and think about the circumstances. Why did she say what she said?’

A simple thought exercise.

Okay. Good.

That might help him work through what she’d just said.

Howard nodded and left.

***

Jarvis stepped into the house and sighed.

Miss Carter, in the last few days, had gone from being horrified at Mrs. Cassidy’s remark to being outraged. She had yelled and ranted. For some reason...well, either way, Jarvis had decided he needed to have a talk and try to get her to see sense. Miss Carter meant no harm, so it hardly did to upset her.

Jarvis put the groceries away and then went off in search of Mrs. Cassidy.

Some part of him whispered that he might not have a leg to stand on, but he pushed that aside.

The woman in question stepped into the living room as he entered through the other door, with a cup of tea. ‘Ma’am,’ he said. ‘I was wondering if I might have a word.’

‘Good,’ Mrs. Cassidy said. ‘I wanted a word with you as well.’ She took up an armchair. ‘Please, sit.’

Suddenly, and inexplicably feeling like a schoolchild about to be scolded, Jarvis sat down opposite her.

‘Now, Mr. Jarvis, about that blood. How did Miss Carter get her hands on it?’

‘How did...?’ The question threw him for a loop but, above all, Jarvis was an honest man. ‘After Miss Carter told me about the situation, my integrity demanded I deliver the blood to her.’

‘Your integrity.’ The tone of voice Mrs. Cassidy used seemed to suggest that this was somehow amusing. ‘So, tell me, Mr. Jarvis, what right did Miss Carter have to the blood?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Jarvis asked.

‘She was not his wife, nor a member of his family.’ Mrs. Cassidy gently pointed out. ‘What right, then, did she have to the blood of Steve Rogers?’

Jarvis floundered, fishing. The problem was that it was an excellent question. It did give him one thought. ‘What right did Mr. Stark have to it?’

‘Steve Rogers was part of Project Rebirth,’ Mrs. Cassidy said. ‘Mr. Stark was the head scientist in charge at the time of its conclusion. The blood, along with all the other specimens, were turned over to him.’ She got up and left him to his thoughts.

Now Jarvis really felt like a scolded child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because Jarvis needed to be told off too.
> 
> Yes, Howard is beginning to suspect that Miriam has powers.
> 
> We'll find out what Peg was so offended by in the next chapter.


	7. Truth of the Matter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Howard and Miriam talk about both Peggy Carter and Steve Rogers.

Howard sat at the patio table the next morning when Miriam and John came out. He looked down at the list that sat next to his left hand. With the data staring him in the face like this, the conclusion was obvious. It was unpleasant, but it was obvious. Maybe Howard would be better just to stick to his company. At least when people tried to use you to further their careers there, it was par for the course.

They didn’t pretend to be your friend.

Miriam glanced over as she sat down. ‘I see you did as I suggested. What did you find out?’

Howard swallowed a mouthful of coffee. ‘You were right. Peg’s hyper-critical. The list of criticisms is a mile long and I’m sure I still didn’t get all of them.’

Miriam nodded. ‘And the praises?’

‘I can count them on one hand.’

‘Circumstances?’

‘Generally, when she wanted something out of me.’

Miriam nodded her head. ‘Truth be told, she probably doesn’t realise she’s doing it. She’s just so single-mindedly focused on her objective – in this case, getting the information about the Wakandan spies – that everything else is cancelled out in her mind. Of course that doesn’t excuse it, and it certainly doesn’t negate the toxic effect of such behaviour.’

‘Toxic effect?’ Howard asked curiously.

‘Humans, as a body,’ Miriam said, ‘are extremely co-dependent, despite what we like to think. We _need_ social contact. The company we keep defines the people we are. For instance, someone who has a supportive social network, or group of friends, is often more confident, self-assured, and, most importantly, healthier than the person who surrounded themselves with people who say “we’re your friends” and then runs them down, uses them, and, in some cases, gaslights them.’

‘Gaslights?’ Howard hadn’t heard the phrase before.

‘Have you ever seen that play?’ John asked. ‘The one where the husband tries to drive his wife insane by turning down the gas lighting and, when she complained about it, insisted the lights were as bright as they always were? People do things like that in real life. They manipulate someone in order to make them question reality so they become doubtful of their own perception and the manipulator gets complete power over them.’

‘That’s disgusting,’ Howard said.

‘Yes,’ Miriam said. ‘But it happens.’ She leaned back. ‘On the other hand, if someone’s ego is pandered and they’re never subject to punishment, they become self-entitled and egotistical.’

‘Is that what happened to Steve?’ Howard asked.

‘Essentially.’ Miriam picked up the knife and grabbed the butter. ‘Like I’ve said, we didn’t expect him to survive into adulthood so any behavioural correction was typically just to make life easier for everyone else in the moment – and was often unintentionally subverted by Bucky and Sarah.’

Howard supposed Sarah must’ve been Steve’s mom. ‘How’d they do that?’

‘By focusing more on his physical weakness than the consequences of his actions,’ Miriam said. ‘I don’t think he really understood the concept of the Depression, to be honest – which was really impressive in Brooklyn.’

‘That’s really impressive anywhere,’ John remarked.

‘It’s funny,’ Howard mused. ‘I never saw this in him.’

‘Did you ever question him or disagree with him?’ Miriam asked.

‘Not that I can recall.’ Howard frowned. ‘I wasn’t fond of him grabbing the vibranium shield, but then Peg came in the lab, and then decided to test it by shooting at it.’  
Miriam had been lifting her tea cup to her lips. She froze. ‘I’m sorry? In the lab? She fired a gun at a metal shield in the middle of an enclosed space?’

John looked horrified. ‘And no one got injured?’

Good point. ‘Well, vibranium defies the typical laws of physics, but only the lab technicians knew that.’ Peg hadn’t been one of them. ‘Even so, _I_ ducked for cover when she did that. I think I was in too much shock after the fact to really be thinking straight.’

‘I expect so,’ Miriam said. ‘The point is that Steve Rogers never saw dissent from you. Had he seen that, you would have seen quite a different man. Steve was friendly enough, when you agreed with him. If you gave him a single dissenting opinion, though, and never rescinded it then you were suddenly the enemy.’

Howard frowned. Steve couldn’t handle differing opinions? The concept was weird to Howard because he liked a good debate; he liked to have his opinions and views challenged. It helped him to expand his knowledge base. It was mind-boggling to him that Steve had never wanted to hear such things.

But Miriam had been his teacher. She’d known him for years – as opposed to Howard, who’d only known the guy for little over one year. She knew who Steve Rogers was, and she had seen him grow up. It stood to more than enough reason that she knew the man better than he did. So, Howard was more inclined to believe her.

‘Why?’ Howard asked.

‘I can’t say for sure, but I’m reasonably sure he had a strong feeling of inferiority due to his size and ill health,’ Miriam said. ‘I’m actually convinced that was the reason for why he was always spoiling for a fight. More than once, Bucky was overheard telling him that he had nothing to prove. Over the years, I’ve found that anyone who feels inferior will either seek the tear down the people they consider above them, or try to find something that they can feel superior about. In Steve’s case, that was his...morality, I suppose he would have called it. In his mind, it seemed, a superior morality meant you could never be wrong.’

‘In anything,’ John said.

‘I suppose he was well-known in Brooklyn,’ Howard mused.

‘Regrettably, yes,’ John said. ‘People actually breathed a sigh of relief when they realised that kid _wasn’t_ coming back.’

Howard cracked a grin. Truth be told he really hadn’t known Steve too well. His contact with him was more based around supplying him with equipment. He considered asking why Erskine had been so certain that Steve was a good man, but he knew they’d have no more answers than he did.

‘Interestingly,’ Miriam suddenly remarked, ‘I tried a similar exercise as that,’ she nodded towards the paper next to Howard’s hand, ‘on Carter. She got offended and I got nothing.’

The way she said it...‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that Carter’s more like Steve than I was expecting. Once she makes up her mind, she’s not going to change it.’ She rubbed her chin. ‘Not without her entire world-view being shattered beforehand, at least.’

***

 **Kamar-Taj, Kathmandu, Nepal**  
A golden portal opened up in the temple. A fair-haired woman stepped out and walked through the temple with familiarity and purpose. The woman strode through the Kamar-Taj. The doors to one of the most restricted and reserved rooms opened up for her. There was a small group waiting for her in the room. She stopped before the bald female in the palest robes.

‘Hello,’ the fair-haired woman spoke with a German accent.

The bald woman raised her eyebrows. ‘I see you reincarnated into Germany.’

‘With a collapsing economy due to two other governments bleeding it dry?’ The fair-haired woman cocked her head. ‘I was not the only one that saw the social upheaval coming, and sought the excitement.’

‘Though I very much doubt you expected the excitement to take quite the form it did.’

The German woman nodded her head in acquiescence.

‘What is your name this time around?’

‘Greta Haumann.’

‘And what brings you here now, Ms. Haumann?’

‘One of my associates has infiltrated HYDRA,’ Greta said. ‘We have reason to fear an extinction-level event. I wish to utilise the Time Stone in order to check.’

***

 **Stark Mansion, New York, USA**  
Miriam huffed as she walked into the house.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Howard asked. He was slumped on his sofa, head tilted back.

‘Just found some text on the Tesseract, but I can’t read it,’ Miriam said. ‘Long day?’

‘I got five people wanting contracts. I gotta decide who to accept and who to tell to look elsewhere.’ Howard lifted his head. ‘Need me to call any experts?’

‘I doubt anyone you could call would be able to translate, honestly,’ Miriam said. ‘But I do know a fellow who could read it, regardless of what language it’s in.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Dubicki.’

‘Dubicki?’

‘Piotr Dubicki. He was one of the most active members of the Polish Resistance during the war. He’s never seen a word he couldn’t translate.’

Oh, so he was a Polish man. ‘How do you know him?’

Miriam just smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point, I don't think Howard's met Obadiah Stane at this point. When he does, I'm seeing him be a lot more cautious and suspicious.
> 
> I can't remember who mentioned the gaslighting play, but it stuck out for me so I put it in.


	8. International Relations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Transcendent Souls know the problem. Now they have to deal with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Otto's conversation in this chapter is happening in German.

Jarvis was startled when he found, in the letter box, an envelope with no stamp and “Miriam” written across it. Presumably, it must have been hand-delivered. Jarvis looked down the street before he took the envelope in. Mrs. Cassidy was sitting in the living room, knitting something or other. As far as Jarvis understood, she’d done all she could and was now waiting on her friend.

‘A letter arrived for you, Mrs. Cassidy,’ Jarvis said.

‘Thank you.’ She set her knitting aside and took the letter from him. Opening it, she pulled out a slip of paper but said nothing. She just nodded. Standing up, she walked out of the room. Jarvis sternly reminded himself that it was none of his business. He’d already been soundly put in his place by sticking his nose in places it didn’t belong by this woman.  
Jarvis hadn’t actually realised how much he did it before she’d started reprimanding him for it.

For quite a while (since he’d known him actually), Jarvis had thought of Mr. Stark as childish and in need of constant care. However, Mrs. Cassidy had sharply reminded Jarvis that his employer had managed to look after himself perfectly well before they ever met – and Jarvis was his first butler! Mr. Stark had built Stark Industries up from the ground and was now one of the most sought-after weapons manufacturers in the world.

 _‘Do not,’_ she had rather sharply told him, _‘mistake eccentricity for incompetence.’_

With a sigh, Mrs. Cassidy suddenly stood up, drawing Jarvis out of his musings. ‘Mr. Jarvis, did Mr. Stark mention my friend’s arrival?’

‘Yes, Mrs. Cassidy,’ Jarvis said. ‘He had me set up a room for him.’

Mrs. Cassidy nodded. ‘Thank you. My husband’s gone to pick him up now.’ She walked out of the room.

There was something in her countenance that Jarvis couldn’t quite put his finger on. Regardless, he returned to his duties. About twenty minutes later, he made his way downstairs as he heard Mr. Cassidy’s vehicle pulling in. Stepping out onto the front porch, Jarvis saw Mr. Cassidy talking to a fellow somewhere in his thirties with pale red hair – almost auburn.

Mr. Cassidy spotted him. ‘The butler, Mr. Jarvis,’ he said, causing the man to turn and look at him. ‘Mr. Jarvis, this is Piotr Dubicki.’

‘Pleasure to meet you,’ Mr. Dubicki said in a European accent – where, Jarvis could not accurately say. ‘I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to talk later, but Mim did make it sound rather important when she called me. So, if you could show me where I’ll be dumping these,’ he gestured to his bags, ‘I’ll see to the problem.’

Jarvis nodded. ‘I believe it’s just a translation.’

He never saw Piotr smirk to himself in amusement.

***

Piotr looked at the note Miriam had gotten. It was short and sweet, but perfectly clear.

_Someone’s gathering Infinity Stones – killing everything and everyone in his path – Tesseract a target._

Which meant there was most likely an Infinity Stone inside of it.

Miriam and Piotr walked down into the bunker. ‘If there is an Infinity Stone in it,’ Miriam was saying, ‘it explains why the Red Skull vanished upon picking it up. The question remains as to which one. It’s certainly not the Soul Stone.’

‘Certainly not.’ Piotr smirked. ‘There would have been a body left behind.’

Miriam snorted. ‘Not sure we’re supposed to be amused at that.’

‘Hey, none of us ever claimed to be any epitome of virtue. Especially not in this era, and especially not when most of us became what we are in times when if someone knocked your front teeth out, you were perfectly within your rights to turn around and knock their front teeth out.’

‘True.’

Miriam opened the bunker and they stepped in to the blue glow. With the awareness of what was most likely powering it, Miriam opened the casing around the Tesseract and picked it up in her bare hands. As she did so, her eyes glowed orange. She looked at Piotr, suspecting what she herself could not see. Piotr nodded.

‘Well, what does it say?’ She tossed the Tesseract to him. As it left her hand, the glow in her eyes vanished.

As Piotr caught it, his green eyes began to glow orange just as Miriam’s had. He turned the cube in his hand. The inscription Miriam had found was written in an ancient tongue, and one not of this world. Still, Piotr easily read it – and he groaned. ‘Odin had the Space Stone placed in this cube to make it easy to use.’

‘Odin, huh?’ Miriam frowned. ‘Do you think he’ll stick his nose in?’

‘He hasn’t so far, but I doubt he’ll get off his lazy butt and do it himself.’

Miriam snorted in a very unladylike fashion.

***

 **Morocco**  
A phone call was put out – two of them really. One of those phone calls went from the Kamar-Taj in Nepal to Germany to Austria to Japan to Turkey to Korea. The second phone call went from America to France to Colombia to Morocco. As the last phone call was made, Neo Botha hung up the phone.

When he helped Howard Stark with his flying car, it had been partially a spur of the moment decision and partially just for the amusement of knowing how mental the Wakandans would go if they suddenly found “the outside” cranking out inventions that they had considered beyond the outside’s ability (all the while ignoring the fact that Wakanda had been sabotaging them all these years). Howard Stark coming to find him was one of those things that could have happened, and could have not.

Otto’s concerns on the Tesseract had all twelve of them trying to find some way to determine the real threat. Howard – who had access to the artefact – had offered the perfect opening to find out what HYDRA were planning. According to Miriam, there were quite a lot of external problems in there too so it was probably for the best that he had done what he did.

It was a colossal pain in the neck, though, that people still held the wartime national prejudices. It would have been ideal to all gather in the one place and work out what they’d be doing. As it stood, though, they had to split up into two groups.

Ideally, they had 80 years. But that alternative meant that the “almighty snap” would happen and that would wipe out half of all life in the universe. To minimalise casualty, they had to pull this Mad Titan into the fight _now_. The plan at present was to gather one group into America so they could work out what to do.

The other group would go to the Temple of Transcendence, buried deep in the Himalayas, and use its resources to search for an adequate battleground.

All this, of course, meant, that Neo was heading back to America.

***

 **Siberia**  
‘ _Agent_ Fabian.’

‘ _Commander_.’ Otto Fabian sat down, expression completely neutral. The only nice thing about HYDRA was that as long as you kept a flat expression and emotions out of your countenance, it never occurred to them that you might be a mole. After all his time, he’d perfected the illusion of having no emotions.

The commander held up the report Otto had sent him. ‘ _You have a lead in Nepal_?’

‘ _Quite so. No doubt the Americans think themselves clever sticking it there._ ’

The commander smirked. ‘ _Do you require a partner_?’

Otto scoffed. ‘ _For this? Child’s play_!’

The commander nodded. ‘ _Then have a good time. Hail_ HYDRA.’

Otto rose and gave the salute. ‘ _Hail_ HYDRA!’

Honestly, Otto was getting sick of it.

***

 **New York, USA**  
Neo had caught a plane to France. He’d picked up a man called Harmon Linville, and then they’d flown to Colombia to pick up a woman called Alisa Sierra. The three of them had then flown up north to New York. Departing the plane, they’d been met by John and Miriam Cassidy and Piotr Dubicki.

John had stood back and watched the five Transcendent Souls “meet and greet”.

John expected nosiness from Carter, and perhaps Jarvis. He had a strong feeling, however, that while Howard didn’t quite know what was going on, he had a good feeling of it.

***

Some part of Howard itched to know.

Yet, from an early age his mother had taught him to recognise one thing: helping people was all very well and good, but sometimes you were going to be more of a hindrance. You needed to be able to recognise that. And, to them, Howard knew if he tried to help them – aside from what he was already doing – he’d be more of a hindrance.

_Extinction-level event._

The words would be enough to sent terror into anyone’s heart. Hell, when Phillips had heard the phrase, his expression had gone like stone. But the man was a colonel that had dedicated his life to protecting the American people from all hostile forces – no matter what they may be. He’d immediately begun coordinating with both Howard and his allies to protect the public from this event in the instance that it did come into fruition.

In fact, all the world’s militaries were doing the exact same thing.

Then came the idea that Miriam may have had powers. With his new tech, Howard had begun looking around more carefully – especially when he went out of the country on business. Contrary to what he’d previously thought, super-powered people were not uncommon. They generally kept to themselves and tried to remain unseen, but they were there.

There were countless records of them from the war – at a time when their powers would be welcomes and accepted in the fighting force, but they’d seemed to bolt for the hills the moment the war was over. Digging a bit deeper, and calling in some favours, had revealed why. And Howard had thought he was going to be sick.

That was his next project after Wakanda. If anyone could help them, it would be the United Nations. Of course, he’d need...models, so to speak – people who had powers and could keep the public safe in a way that they could get behind. That was why Howard was sitting with all these files and making an entire board profiling different kinds of powers.  
Steve hadn’t been the first enhanced, not by a long shot.

He’d just been the first one with good press.

He would not be the last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If we think about lifespans, there's no way to know exactly how old Thanos is, or how long ago Titan was destroyed. Given Thanos's tendency to get his followers from children he took from societies he destroyed (Gamora, Nebula), and given his number of followers - and their likely ages - I believe he _would_ have been operating at this time.
> 
> Examples: Turtle (pet: lives at least 10 years if cared for properly; sea turtle: 152 yrs on average)
> 
> Tiger: 25 yrs
> 
> Toad: 36 yrs
> 
> Horse: 50 yrs
> 
> Elephant: 69 yrs


	9. Preparations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peg becomes more and more suspicious.

Peg stepped into the diner and paused.

She hadn’t been expecting to see Miriam Cassidy sitting in a booth at the back of the diner – even less so to see her sitting with four others. Aside from an African-American, there was a coffee-skinned woman and two other men. Eyes narrowing, Peg made her way over to the booth right next to them and sat down, her back to them. She was irritated to discover that they were _not_ speaking English.

Mind flaring with suspicion, Peg turned her head just enough not to draw suspicion from them, and tried to find cues amongst them on what they were talking about. There was nothing. Their hand gestures remained vague, with their hands more occupied with their food and drinks. They never raised their voices or seemed to become upset or agitated. For the way they were going on, they could’ve been talking about the weather.

But why should such an innocent topic be disguised by a foreign language?

Eventually, to Peg’s frustration, they got up and headed out. She was surprised by the coffee-skinned woman stopping by her booth, though, and leaning on the table. ‘Look,’ she said in an accent Peg couldn’t quite place, ‘I know it’s none of my business, but I’ll be frank: it bothers me.’ She then looked Peg right in the eye and said without blinking, ‘If you want to spy on someone without getting caught, firstly don’t look directly at them right before positioning yourself close enough to eavesdrop.’

Peg drew back, shocked. She can’t have been that obvious!

The woman didn’t give her a chance to say anything. ‘Secondly, don’t sit with your back directly to the people you’re spying on, and third: don’t look directly at us. Way your head was turned, it was obvious you were watching us. What kind of sub-par training have you had that you’re just that bad?’

Peg’s spine stiffened. She opened her mouth.

‘The world will forgive corruption,’ the woman said before she could say anything, ‘it’s expected to some degree. But the world never tolerates incompetence.’

That said, she turned and left.

Peg’s temper boiled. They were up to something – they had to be! Why else would they make such a remark to her? They had to be doing something and they were trying to throw her not only off their trail, but also off of her game. Well, that just wasn’t going to work! While she wasn’t certain that Howard was involved, he was hosting Miriam Cassidy. She was clearly involved in this, so that was a good place to start.

With her mind set, Peg began to plan.

***

 **Kathmandu, Nepal**  
The Ancient One watched as the seven Transcendent Souls prepared for the journey ahead. They had all been to this ancient temple before – many times. The place they were going to was buried deep in the mountains. It had several wards in place so that the only way to access the place was by foot.

This was not a place that just _anybody_ could go to.

Of course, when the Soul Stone had selected the twelve individuals for transcendence, it had been equally as picky. The Ancient One had no idea how many trials these people had to complete. She did know, however, that there had been far more than _12_ empowered over the time when the Soul Stone had rested in the Temple of Transcendence.

Only 12 had passed all of the trials.

Powers were not something that should just be handed out like, to quote an American idiom, free samples at a fair. They were a responsibility, and a heavy one at that. If all powers were handed out in the manner in which the Transcendents acquired theirs, there would hardly be a need for the Masters of the Mystic Arts. The undesirables were weeded out and those who held the powers were forced to earn them in order to keep them.

However, the distribution of power was not dictated by these rules. Take Captain America. He had done, really, nothing to earn his powers of enhanced physiology. He had been picked out by a single man and injected. This had happened during a global war and he had been marketed as the ideal American soldier. As a result, the opportunity to prove himself worthy or unworthy of the power he was gifted had never been presented to him.

These 12 had been chosen and trailed as a defence against forces like the one they were preparing themselves for. This...Thanos character was hardly the first who sought to gather the six Infinity Stones – yet another reason the Masters of the Mystic Arts had been conceived. The system they had in place was being used once again. The scale of the problem generally dictated how the Transcendent Souls chose to engage the threat.

The fact that all 12 were working on it, and sought _another planet_ to make their battlefield was very troubling indeed.

***

 **New York, USA**  
Howard had a good feeling about what this was about when Jarvis said Peg wanted to talk to them.

He wasn’t really surprised at what she said. Instead, he was amused. ‘So, let me see if I got this right. You think Mim, Piotr, Harmon, Alisa, and Neo are up to something sinister because they started speaking another language when you tried to eavesdrop on their conversation?’ He snorted and shook his head. ‘If you ask me, switching what language you’re speaking is a nice way to keep nosy parkers from listening on what you’re talking about. It’s funny for everyone except the person trying to eavesdrop.’

‘What could they have been talking about that was so important they didn’t want me understanding them?’ Peg demanded. ‘If it was that harmless, they’d have just ignored me and gone about their business without changing tongues.’

Well, there was something going on, of that Howard was certain. Miriam had talked about herself and the others like they were some kind of organised group. But organised groups usually came together for a purpose. The idea of an extinction-level event was, to Howard’s knowledge, beyond the scope of any human experience. Their comfort with dealing with such a thing screamed of “just another day at the office”. Howard had asked when he’d seen Neo again.

_‘Does this have to do with that extinction-level event you mentioned?’_

_‘As a matter of fact,’_ Neo said, _‘it does.’_

So Howard trusted that not only did they know what to do, but they’d done it before.

Peg, though, was determined that this was some kind of evil that _she_ had to resolve. She wasn’t going to drop it and telling her anything would make the situation worse. It was ridiculous. ‘It might have something to do with the fact that eavesdropping, in civilian society, is considered rude,’ he said pointedly instead. ‘Whatever they’re doing, it’s their business. Leave them alone.’

Howard turned around and walked out of the room.

***

Peg watched Howard walk away.

He had just _dismissed_ her! Peg was used to dismissal from other people – from work colleagues and men she met on the street. However, Howard Stark had never done it. He had always listened to her and taken her seriously. Now he was telling her that her concerns weren’t important. Peg’s fist itched.

Howard wasn’t a fighter, and he had no defences against physical attack. Peg ignored the little voice in the back of her head telling her _that makes physically attacking him cowardly_. It sounded too much like her mother. She turned to Jarvis. He was looking down, in that way he did when he was very uncomfortable with his place in the situation.

‘He can’t disregard this entirely!’ Peg insisted.

Jarvis swallowed and looked up at her. ‘Miss Carter, Mr. and Mrs. Cassidy have been here for nearly a month now. Mr. Dubicki has been here for a week. Mr. Linville, Mr. Botha, and Miss Sierra have been here for two days. In that time I have been able to observe them. There is nothing nefarious in their situation. As a matter of fact, they have been most enthusiastic in trying to correct those of us in this household of our more...unsavoury habits.’

Peg paused. ‘Do you mean to say that they are breaking Howard of his skirt-chasing habits?’

Jarvis winced. ‘Not so much that. They seem to be of the view that Mr. Stark does not deceive them as to his intentions so the behaviour is not as unsavoury as it appears.’

Peg pulled a face. She had been willing to think she may have been mistaken, but it looked like she hadn’t. ‘Then what kind of unsavoury behaviours _are_ they discouraging?’

‘The kind that encroach on a person’s rights as a human being and their health.’

Peg took a moment. ‘You’ve lost me.’

Jarvis took a deep breath. ‘Do you remember when Mrs. Cassidy asked you to make a list of all the people you knew and vocalise their worth to you?’

Peg scowled. She supposed the damn woman must’ve told Jarvis about that. ‘I am not a child, Mr. Jarvis. I do not need to engage in such a frivolous exercise.’

‘It wasn’t frivolous, Miss Carter,’ Jarvis said. ‘And you may not be a child, but she is a teacher. She simply wanted you to engage in some self-reflection.’

Peg’s scowl deepened. ‘I understand myself perfectly, Mr. Jarvis. I don’t need her help to know what the people around me are to me.’ Not giving him a chance to respond, she turned on her heel and marched after Howard.

‘Where are you going?’ Jarvis asked, following her.

‘I’m going to find Howard. We’re not finished here! Where would he have gone?’

‘I’m not sure. If he’s not in his study or his workshop and his car is still here, he could be anywhere.’

His car was still in the shed. Both his study and his workshop were empty. Peg began looking through the house from top to bottom. After ten minutes of searching, they came to a locked door on the third floor. Peg pulled out a set of skeleton keys and began looking for the one which would fit the lock.

‘What are you doing?’ Jarvis asked.

‘This is the first locked door I’ve found,’ Peg said. ‘I’m sure he’s hiding out in here.’ She found the key and put it in the lock. Turning the key, the door clicked open. Jarvis swallowed as she pushed the door open.

Exactly as she’d thought, Howard was in there. He was leaning over a desk. As soon as the door opened, though, he straightened up. When he turned around, Peg saw a look on his face that she’d never seen on him before. He was cold. His brown eyes, usually warm, were now flat and his expression was much the same.

‘You know,’ he said in a tone she’d never heard from him – flat and expressionless. ‘When a door is locked, it means you shouldn’t go poking around.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I imagine there's a number of things Peg carries around with her. Skeleton keys would not be that far of a stretch.


	10. The Wall of the Enhanced

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Howard learns that he was right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of the Holocaust and the Transcendent Souls really show their apathy in this chapter.

Peg stepped in. ‘What have you been doing in here, Howard?’

‘Did I miss the whole thing where that’s any of your business?’ Howard shot back.

Peg’s back went up. ‘Answer the question, Howard!’

Thankfully, she couldn’t understand either his handwriting or his notes. Behind him there was a bulletin board full of the data he’d gathered on the enhanced. He’d also listed down options of precisely what to do with them; how to integrate the enhanced as a body into the rest of society with the least amount of fuss. He only had ideas right now. It’d be good to have input from an actual enhanced (or more), but he didn’t want Peg understanding what he was doing.

Previous experience, and the precedents she’d already set, made it clear that her approach would be locking them all up and throwing away the key unless they agreed to work for her.

‘No.’ For their safety, Howard was not telling her a damn thing.

***

Howard had set the five of them up in a set of suites on the fourth floor. They had a communal living room and kitchen. They were sitting in the kitchen, eating breakfast when Miriam suddenly turned her head. ‘Goddamnit!’

‘At it again?’ Harmon Linville asked.

‘Yup.’

‘Shall we go normally or shall I alter the laws of gravity and physics?’ Piotr asked.

Miriam stood up. ‘Let’s go through the floor and walk to the room normally.’

‘Deal.’

***

Jarvis wasn’t sure what to make of this.

Mr. Stark had clearly been doing something in secret. Transgressing on Mr. Stark’s personal space, though, was one of those things that Mrs. Cassidy had made it clear to him: it was unacceptable. He was not causing any sort of disaster and he was keeping it to himself, so it was none of their business. Yet Miss Carter had just let herself into a locked room in Mr. Stark’s house and walked in making demands of Mr. Stark as if she’d done nothing wrong.

Jarvis’s proper upbringing told him that there was something _very wrong_ with that.

Still, there was something about Mr. Stark’s notes that didn’t sit right with him. The fact that his usually warm and open employer was now cold and closed-off didn’t seem to bode well. Jarvis had never seen it before. He wasn’t sure what to make of it and Miss Carter, at least, seemed to know how to handle the situation.

‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Explain yourself!’

‘I don’t have to!’ Mr. Stark snapped. ‘You came into a locked room – in my house – accuse me and then demand answers?’

‘Well, what are you hiding in here?’ Peg demanded. ‘The door would hardly be locked unless you were doing something you shouldn’t be!’

‘Don’t assume, Miss Carter. You make an ass out of “me” and “u”.’

Jarvis and Miss Carter spun around. Mrs. Cassidy was walking into the room with the other four. They all looked around. Jarvis was surprised to see understanding in their eyes – did they understand Mr. Stark’s notes? – but even more when they began to show approval. Miss Carter’s eyes narrowed. Mr. Stark sighed and plopped down in his desk chair. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

‘Could you guys maybe get them out of my fourth study?’

‘Certainly,’ Ms. Sierra said.

‘Now, see here—’ Miss Carter was interrupted as Mrs. Cassidy and Ms. Sierra walked around, grabbed her arms and lifted her up before bodily removing her from the room.  
Mr. Linville took a hold of Jarvis’s shoulders and turned him around, marching him out of the room. Jarvis was marched down the corridor. Mr. Dubicki apologised to Mr. Stark and closed the door behind them. Jarvis felt the tension in the hands pushing him through the house. They were upset – all five of them. Not with Mr. Stark, though: with Miss Carter and Jarvis himself. Jarvis had the strong feeling they’d crossed yet another line.

He hadn’t been scolded so much since he was a lad.

Jarvis was then pushed to sit down in a chair. He looked up as Mr. Linville, Mr. Dubicki, and Mr. Botha walked around to stand in front of him. All three of them folded their arms and looked down at him, scowls on their faces. They held the silence for what felt like an interminable amount of time.

‘From what Mim tells us, I expect you know what you did wrong,’ Mr. Botha said.

Jarvis took a deep breath. ‘I admit, it was wrong for Miss Carter to open that locked door and for both of us to enter. But still...’

‘Still nothing,’ Mr. Dubicki said, holding up a hand. ‘What Mr. Stark is doing in there is his business and his alone. He is a scientist – something you seem to forget.’

‘But the arrangement of his data...’ Jarvis trailed off.

‘A scientist,’ Mr. Dubicki said. ‘Those sorts of data arrangements are not unusual in the scientific community. The scientist sets out his data so he can view it all, and it is often pinned to walls and such. There was nothing nefarious about that room, despite Miss Carter’s obvious assumptions.’

Jarvis sighed. ‘Miss Carter seemed so certain though.’

‘Is that why you did nothing to stand up for your employer, or remove Miss Carter from the room?’ Mr. Linville asked, appearing amused. He then stepped in and braced his arms on the armrests of the chair Jarvis was in. He did not however, Jarvis noted, encroach on his personal space. ‘A person can be certain of something and yet still be wrong, Mr. Jarvis.’

‘I suppose...’ Jarvis collected himself as the Frenchman straightened up. ‘But then why did Mr. Stark refuse to explain himself?’

‘He was not obligated to.’ Mr. Linville folded his arms and inclined his head. ‘Do you equate everything as good or bad, Mr. Jarvis?’

‘Everything can be equated as good or bad,’ Jarvis said. Of this, he was certain.

‘Can it indeed?’ Mr. Linville tool a step back to join his friends. ‘As you must know, both the countries Piotr and I hail from and, at the beginning, the one Neo hails from were occupied by Nazis. We all joined the efforts of our countries to get rid of them. This is something you would consider good?’

‘Yes,’ Jarvis said.

Mr. Linville nodded his head. ‘Did you ever hear of the Vichy?’

Jarvis nodded. ‘I have.’

‘Good. Now, let me tell you about a chap I knew – a fellow French resistance member. He was very good at keeping attention off of himself. He had some neighbours, however, who sold him out. I say “sold” because there was a high price offered for any resistance member that was turned in. He was subsequently arrested and executed. How would you classify the one who sold him out?’

‘They sold a man out for money,’ Jarvis said. ‘Of course they were bad. I hope they were punished.’

‘No.’ Mr. Linville said the word with amazing disregard. He walked over and sat on the coffee table, ignoring Jarvis’s pointed look at the furniture. ‘The one who sold him out was a fifteen year old girl who worked in a local shop. She lived with her infirm father and her sickly brother. She sold him out, for the money, yes. But she did not sell him, and others like him, out because she wanted the money. She needed that money to pay the bills, to buy groceries, to pay for the medication both her invalids of a father and brother needed. Is she still a bad person?’

Jarvis’s gut dropped. He tried to reconcile the actions with the motivations.

‘No, of course not. She was simply forced to make some very hard decisions at a very difficult time in history. There were likely people who turned in aristocrats for much the same reasons during the revolution. Nothing is clear-cut and simple, Mr. Jarvis. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either foolish or childish. You work for a weapons manufacturer. The point of weapons is to defend through offence. It’s time to grow up, and start seeing the world in shades of grey.’

Mr. Dubicki nodded. ‘I heard the story about what happened with your wife. _You_ were acting in a morally grey manner in that time: you did something illegal in order to try and save lives. Mr. Stark recognised that and saved you both. You would have only been stood up and shot. I saw what happened to the people who went into the places where they would have sent your wife. She would have had a most unpleasant and undignified conclusion to her life.’

Mr. Botha looked at Mr. Dubicki with a twisted lip. ‘You could have just said she’d have been murdered in one of the most inhuman methods available.’

Mr. Dubicki looked at him. ‘He’s not a very sturdy fellow. I was using soft imagery.’

‘The point is,’ Mr. Linville drew the horror-stricken Jarvis out of the nightmarish visions his imagination had begun to cook up, ‘the very least you could do is to accept his grey morality. Even when he does bad things, you need to accept that he does them for good reasons. It’s the very least you can do.’

***

Peg yelled and struggled as she was carried through the house and then deposited on a couch in one of the many sitting rooms. She glared up at the two women. But neither of them seemed particularly moved. Peg went to open her mouth, about to demand what they thought they were doing but Mrs. Cassidy cut her off.

‘That door was locked,’ she said. ‘You had no right to go in – and especially not to use these.’ She pulled out Peg’s skeleton keys.

 _How’d she get them?_ Peg made a grab for her but the other woman shoved her back down.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You can’t just come in to someone’s home and then just waltz around wherever you like. It’s not only underhanded and immoral but, more importantly, it’s rude.’

‘Well, he should have listened to me then!’ Peg snapped.

‘About what?’ Mrs. Cassidy asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Peg ground her teeth. She could hardly tell them. ‘It doesn’t matter. He _dismissed_ my concerns. He’s never done that before!’

‘That’s because, before, he didn’t realise what a user you were.’

‘User?’ Peg demanded. ‘What makes you think I use people?’

‘Name one single time you took “no” for an answer,’ the coffee-skinned woman said with infuriating calmness. ‘Bonus points if it was by a man.’

Peg lifted her chin. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

Mrs. Cassidy smirked and nodded. ‘You can’t. I thought so.’

Peg’s blood boiled. ‘And what about Howard?’

‘What about him?’ Mrs. Cassidy shrugged, but there was a kind of judgemental glare in the eyes of both women.

‘Mr. Jarvis told me you were correcting their unhealthy behaviours, but you didn’t bother with Howard’s skirt-chasing!’

‘What’s to correct?’ the coffee-skinned woman asked, in a kind of inappropriate amusement. ‘He does not deceive the women he beds. He’s actually quite honest about it. That’s refreshing, to be perfectly honest.’

Peg was confused. ‘What are you talking about?’

Both women chuckled.

‘We’ve both met men who will promise everything from marriage to the world on a silver platter to a woman when all they really want is a roll in the hay,’ Mrs. Cassidy said. ‘Howard does no such thing. He is quite clear with his intentions. If the girls haven’t heard of his reputation, which is widely-publicised I add, then the parties made up of only women should tell them all they need to know. If they still follow him upstairs with all that in mind and expect a commitment, that’s their own silly fault.’

The other woman shrugged. ‘Besides, that’s how primitive humans survived. The male would go around seeking as many partners as possible as a way to preserve the species. Though its greatly suppressed now, this instinct still exists in the human psyche. Men like Howard are just more in touch with it.’

‘And that’s acceptable for you?’

‘Well, who’s he hurting?’ Mrs. Cassidy asked. ‘Like I said, if those girls go up there expecting a commitment, it’s their own silly fault. You, on the other hand, consistently cause both physical and emotional harm to the people around you by trying to prove how good you think you are.’

Peg’s muscles tensed. ‘I know my value!’

‘No, you overestimate your value. Everything you do, any fully-trained agent could do. Maybe they could even do it better. You think you’re irreplaceable, but you’re not. Only one in a few billion people _really_ matter.’

***

When Howard came out of the room, hours later, he found Harmon standing there.

‘You’re looking into enhanced, aren’t you?’

So he had understood Howard’s notes. He’d thought so. ‘Yeah...’

Harmon nodded. ‘Good. Those people really need help – a lot of them.’

Howard studied him a moment before he walked over. ‘You’re an enhanced, aren’t you? You, Piotr, Mim, Alisa, and Neo.’

It was Harmon’s turn to study him. ‘We are. The only reason we never needed any help was because we knew what was going on.’

‘Most of them don’t?’

‘Barring the Inhumans, no.’

‘Inhumans?’

Harmon shrugged. ‘Mesolithic period, we think. Alien race picks up a group of humans off the African plains, conducts experiments and puts them back. Add some terrigen mist and you’ve got yourself the Inhumans. They live in these little sub-communities apart from the rest of humanity. Don’t want to be bothered – and with good reason.’

That didn’t sound good. ‘What happens to enhanced that get caught?’

‘You know,’ Harmon said. ‘I saw the notes in the study.’

‘...I was hoping that was exaggeration.’

‘I’m afraid not.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should like to mention that the apathy towards the Holocaust was bloody uncomfortable to write, putting it very mildly.
> 
> Next up: We check up on the other Transcendent Souls.


	11. The Temple of Transcendence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor, Loki, and the Warriors Three met the Transcendent Souls.
> 
> It goes about as well as you'd expect.

**The Himalayas**  
The stone path formed in front of them as the group of seven trudged through howling winds. They all knew where they were going, and they knew why most people died on the way up. That was why this temple had remained undiscovered throughout the birth of archaeology and subsequent expeditions that resulted. It was the simple fact that nobody could get up there.

The seven of them came to a stop at a long cliff towering above them. They had no need to look to know that there was no way up besides climbing – and climbing generally resulted in bits of the cliff-face detaching. The blonde woman crouched down and began to draw in the snow at their feet. After a moment she finished. From her drawing a staircase arose. It quickly formed and connected the ground they stood on to the top of the cliff and hooked across to stable land.

 _Thank you, Liesel_ , was the general sentiment expressed through Hana’s mental synchronisation as the group began to ascend the stairs. Well, there was hardly any point trying to talk. Even if one could make themselves heard over the roar of the wind, they’d first have to pull down their scarf from covering their noses and mouths and these were sub-zero temperatures.

Sure, Otto was pulling the magma under the earth up enough to warm their walk a bit (and admittedly risking an avalanche behind them), and Emil was using his matter manipulation to create the path they were now walking down as they stepped off of Liesel’s stairway and continued their ascent, but it was still freezing.

Well, of course. It was the Himalayas.

Otto lifted his head. _Blizzard incoming._ With that warning Emil erected a force-field around the group so they could continue unhindered.

***

 **A Far-Off Planet**  
‘The Transcendents are mobilising.’

An lifted his head and narrowed his eyes. ‘All of them?’

‘All of them.’

He sat back. ‘Interesting. Keep an eye on the situation and let me know immediately if they send any communications.’

***

 **Earth**  
The temple was tucked away in a dark alcove in the side of the mountains. The seven of them walked in, taking the un-booby trapped side entrance. It was still cold inside but nothing to the outside. The seven Transcendent Souls walked through the temple with purpose and a clear sense of familiarity. They knew this place – despite how long it’d been since they’d been there.

They walked through the temple with purpose and the knowledge of precisely where they were going. The final chamber they entered was immediately lit up as Otto clicked – the flame torches igniting as he exercised his pyrokinesis. In the centre of the room, the floor had a deep pit, bordered by a short stone wall. The seven of them walked around and stood on the outside of the wall.

Around the outside of the wall, there were twelve equally spaced circular panels. Each of the seven Transcendent Souls picked one to stand upon. As soon as they all came into position, an orange glow began to emanate from the pit. Their eyes locked on it, seeking out what they wanted.

The universe was vast.

At the Kamar-Taj they had already discussed what they wanted. Now, they looked for what they wanted. Unfortunately, hospitable uninhabited planets were hard to come by. If a planet was hospitable, it generally harboured some form of life. None of them had entertained the fanciful notion that finding such a place would be easy – but they all knew it had to exist somewhere.

After all, Earth had once been a hospitable but uninhabited planet.

***

 **Asgard**  
Heimdall noticed.

There was a power output on Midgard. He turned his All-Seeing Eye towards the power output. But then something quite unexpected happened: his All-Seeing Eye was being blocked. It was as if he was standing in front of a wall with ordinary eyes and attempting to gaze through it. There was some force down there, tapping into unimaginable power and blocking him from seeing what they were doing.

Heimdall didn’t like it.

So he went directly to Odin.

He didn’t like it much either.

***

 **Earth**  
They finally found it.

It had taken hours, but they found it.

Greta spent a few minutes experimenting, working out the most efficient way to get there, and settled on an all-encompassing portal. Hana and Liesel spent a few minutes on the planet’s surface setting up a fake beacon to give the illusion that there was an Infinity Stone on the planet. Shin set up an alert system so he’d know immediately when the Mad Titan arrived.

When they came out of the portal, back onto Earth, they’d wrapped the snow clothes back around them again. There was a barrier around the Temple, even now when the Soul Stone no longer resided there, that had insurances against people forcing their way in – by any means. That left them at the base of the ranges which needed to be crossed in order to gain access to the temple.

This was something they had all known since each had set foot in the temple for the first time. So when, upon beginning the trek back down, they’d scarcely taken a few steps and they heard a loud boom of thunder, followed by a loud, echoing _SMACK!_ that seemed to bounce off of the mountains, they all snorted.

They immediately changed course. Rather than risk walking through the snow to the source of the sound and missing whoever it was, Greta waved her arm in practiced motions and created yet another portal. They stepped through to find a group of five. The odd man out seemed to be a tall man who wasn’t particularly muscled as the others were. He watched in a kind of resigned exasperation as three of the four others tried to find the barrier before rolling his eyes, walking over and lifting a hand.

As he came to the barrier, it glowed against the magic he was using.

The tall blond man, who looked to be in charge, asked, ‘What sorcery is this, Loki?’

At the name, the seven Transcendent Souls looked around at each other. _The Norse Pantheon._ Of course, it was a little bit obvious. None of them were wearing any furs. If they had been human, they’d have been freezing to death. The way they were dressed suggested they were a longer-living species.

‘Merely a barrier to stop access to the building via anything that is not walking,’ Loki said.

Emil spoke up. ‘Well it would hardly do to have just anyone enter the Temple of Transcendence, would it?’

Four out of the five of them spun around, alarmed. The fifth one – the one who’d used a form of sorcery – just looked at them in mild interest. No doubt he’d noticed their presence beforehand, unlike those around him. The blond man in charge stepped forward. ‘Temple of Transcendence? There is no such temple.’

Hana smirked. ‘I should like to point out that you are familiar with the Norselands. We are a very long way from the Norselands.’

The other three, who seemed to be warriors over anything else, suddenly looked uncomfortable, as if they only just realised that they were in unfamiliar terrain. Then they looked offended. The largest of them, a redheaded one, took a step forward. But the leader beat him to the punch, pointing a large hammer at her. ‘Have care how you speak. You know not who you speak to.’

‘Let’s see.’ Hana cocked her head. ‘Shoulder-length blond hair, beard, fancy belt, and an overcompensating hammer. If I were to take a stab in the dark, I’d say you were Thor of Asgard.’

Greta folded her arms. ‘And, if I’m recalling my Norse mythology correctly, aren’t you supposed to be the guardian of mankind?’

‘Mythology?’ Thor asked.

Shin barked out a short and quiet laugh. ‘This world has changed since you were here last. People doubt whether you even existed in the first place.’

Loki nodded his head in acquiesce, even as the others began to look angry. ‘Well, that makes sense.’

The other three glared at him while Thor spun around in shock. ‘What do you mean, brother?’

‘We haven’t been here in centuries,’ Loki said. ‘These people only live a handful of years. To them, the days of the Vikings would be a distant memory. They have never seen us, so how could they be certain we were any more than merely stories?’

Thor didn’t look happy. ‘We protected these people for years!’

‘My God.’ Emil dropped his head back. ‘He’s talking like they were the only ones.’

Thor spun around. The redheaded man suddenly acted, charging at Emil. He brought his sword out and brought it to the Transcendent Soul’s throat, but he stopped. ‘Mind your place, mortal!’

‘My place?’ Emil quirked an eyebrow, more amused at the “mortal” remark over anything else. ‘I know my place.’ He used two fingers to push the sword away from his throat. With his other arm, he then struck the sword. The blade shattered. The three warriors cried out in alarm. The redheaded man leapt back in shock. He stared at the sword stump in shock.

Loki merely raised an eyebrow.

‘What?’ Emil asked. ‘Haven’t you ever seen supernatural condition before?’

With a grunt, Thor swung his hammer. The electricity shot out in a lethal dosage and aimed right for Emil. Hana sighed and lifted her hand. The electricity diverted. The Asgardians, barring Loki, cried out in alarm and disbelief as the lightning gathered into the palm of her hand. Loki, on the other hand, was watching with consideration and calculation across his expression. Then he made a series of movements with his hands. He frowned as the results came back empty.

With a sweep of her arm, Hana flattened Thor as his trio. ‘I’ve had enough for this.’

‘Me too.’ Greta waved her own hand. A golden portal appeared and shot over the whole lot of them. Loki was the last one it hit and carried off, but he was also the only one who saw it coming and watched it calmly. Once they were gone, Greta turned to Hana. ‘I take it he knew where it was taking them.’

‘Yes,’ Hana said. ‘Should we worry about them coming back?’

Ceren Solak, the Transcendent Soul who’d come from Turkey this time around, spoke up for the first time since they’d left the Temple. ‘Not immediately. They’ll need to report to Odin, and then they’ll try to scan us. As Loki just discovered, that is impossible. Afterwards, they’ll likely deliberate for a while and drop in at the most inconvenient moment.’ She frowned. ‘I’ve wondered but I’ve never asked: why did the Soul Stone make us unscannable?’

Liesel frowned. ‘Good question, but we can’t exactly ask it.’

Otto nodded his head. ‘I think it’s something to do with pragmatism. It probably figures it’d be harder for us if people could scan our powers and find out what we can and cannot do. And given our purpose...’ He trailed off.

‘Good point,’ Ceren said. ‘So what are we going to do about the Norse Pantheon, then?’

‘Is that a trick question?’ Greta asked. ‘We still have contact with the Sumerians.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The connection between longevity and clothes will be explained in a couple of chapters.


	12. While We Wait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The calm before the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When fishing, one must sit and wait for the fish to bite.

**New York, USA**  
Howard’s “enhanced project” had to go on the backburner for a bit.

Col. Phillips had called him up and asked for a consultation. ‘We got all this stuff from Wakandan spies and we can’t make heads or tails of it.

So Howard headed to the offices in DC, bringing Jarvis along with him, and sat down to look at the confiscated tech. Wakanda, despite the fact that they’d been caught red-handed, had been strangely silent. Howard had remembered what Neo had said about them and immediately put it down to their isolationist (such as it was) policy.

The Transcendents (that was what the group called themselves; be interesting to find out why) had promised to keep working on his side project. As Alisa had put it: ‘The other faction have set a trap. We’re waiting for a bite.’

That bite could take ages to come, so they needed to fill in the time somehow.

The added bonus was that they knew other enhanced people.

So, off Howard went. He took Jarvis because Miriam had suggested, and the other four had agreed, that getting Jarvis out of Carter’s sphere of influence would probably be good for him. He should have shown Peg the door the moment she started snooping. Instead he’d just meekly followed her around.

Getting him to stand at Howard’s back in a military setting and having him hand Howard the relevant devices and documents as required might actually teach him a thing or two. Jarvis had been horrified at the thought of someone having to kick their morals out the window for the sake of necessity – Harmon had told Howard what example he used.   
Howard was hardly surprised. In a situation like that...well, desperate times and desperate measures and whatnot.

When he arrived in Washington, Phillips walked him to the lab. ‘Not like you to bring your butler with you.’

‘Yeah,’ Howard said. ‘As it happens, he’s been a little too impressed with Peg in the last couple of years. Just last week, he just followed her about as she stormed through my place and then picked a locked door.’

Phillips rolled his eyes. ‘You realise you could’ve called the police on her, right?’

‘For what?’ Howard asked. ‘She wasn’t actually trespassing. I did let her in. I just didn’t pay any attention to her conspiracy theory.’

‘Did you tell her to leave?’

‘Not expressly.’ Howard shrugged. ‘I think, at worst, it was just bad manners.’

Phillips shook his head. ‘Let me tell you something about Carter, Stark. If any rules or laws inconvenience her, she tends to behave like they don’t exist. She’s very good at playing the victim. Why do you think she snuck around behind my back so much? I didn’t buy into her bullshit.’

‘I’m learning that, yes,’ Howard said. ‘I shouldn’t have introduced Jarvis to her.’ He shook his head. ‘He holds her in far too high regard.’

‘What the hell for?’

‘I think, mostly, he’s just overwhelmed by her, and he mistakes being overwhelmed for admiration.’

Phillips had then got a thoughtful look on his face. He then shook it off. ‘You still could’ve called the police on her. You know, it’s illegal to carry any form of lock-picking equipment if you’re not a locksmith.’

***

 **New York**  
Piotr walked around the phone line, speaking into the phone as he paced back and forth. John watched him for a moment before turning to his wife. ‘So what’s the idea here?’

‘Howard wants to change the public perception of the enhanced, so he’s looking for enhanced with...friendly powers, I suppose you could say.’ Miriam rubbed the back of her neck. ‘Things that wouldn’t spook the Average Joe on the street.’

‘That must be a very small list.’

‘It is.’ Miriam sighed. ‘We sat down with Howard and looked over categories of powers. We’re starting off with the sensory powers.’

John looked at her. ‘You know if you do this by category, people are going to start noticing?’

‘Why do you think we’re looking for an even spread of non-threatening powers. Sensory powers aren’t the only passive powers; they’re just the least-threatening-sounding ones. What’s so alarming about being a human barometer or compass? What’s so scary about being able to sense the difference between concrete and gravel or sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide?’

John acquiesced to that. If anything, those powers would be viewed, or rather could be skewed, more as useful skills. But then Howard would need poster children, so to speak, for the more dangerous powers. Perhaps he would even push for some sort of guidelines for such people, that they could be treated like everybody else.

John honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled that off, from what he’d seen of the man.

***

 **Washington DC**  
Jarvis felt horribly out of his depth as he stood by Mr. Stark’s desk. The man in question had spent the last few days in the base’s lab. Now, he swaggered to the desk and sat down. As he lifted a hand, Jarvis put the file he wanted into his hand.

‘These devices,’ Mr. Stark was saying as all this was happening, ‘are the sort of things we’d generally find in a science-fiction or a spy novel. Colonel, you sent men to check Wakanda out, didn’t you?’

Col. Phillips nodded once. ‘And they couldn’t get in. They reported running into some kind of barrier. Are you saying that was a force-field?’

‘Most likely.’ Mr. Stark opened the file as he took his seat. ‘Quite a few of their devices even linked up to some kind of virtual system. I was able to get in and have a look around.’

‘They didn’t try to stop you?’ Col. Phillips asked.

‘Of course they did, but they use a basic logical code to run the thing. Once I worked that out I found I could access a heck of a lot of it and they didn’t even seem aware that I was in there.’

‘What did you find out?’ one of the analysts asked.

‘Their isolationist policy,’ Mr. Stark curled his lip, obviously finding the phrase very distasteful, ‘started around the same time as the European colonists arrived in Africa. Even now, they still refer to anyone with white skin as a “colonist”.’

One brown-skinned man scoffed. ‘This coming from someone who was never colonised?’

Mr. Stark nodded.

Col. Phillips scowled. ‘So, what you’re saying is that they’re a nation of cowards?’

‘Who think they’re the best thing since sliced bread,’ Mr. Stark said. ‘As Mr. Botha told me, they consider guns, bombs, and other modern weaponry to be primitive while they primarily use spears and swords.’

Jarvis winced. It seemed unnecessary to tar an entire nation with the same brush as the individuals who had decided to isolate the nation. Yes, they had done it to save themselves from the slavery and the degradation that the rest of Africa had been subjected too. Protecting oneself and ones people seemed the noble thing to do. At the same time, they had pretended to be as poor as the rest of the continent.

They had to have seen the poverty and the suffering of the people around them; of the nations around them. Yet they had not lifted a finger to help them. They had instead barred non-Wakandans from entering their borders while they came and went as they liked. Through all of that, they seemed to have become stationary. Jarvis wanted to feel sorry for them but...

Well, since he’d been here he’d heard so many stories from soldiers and administration officers alike. All of them were different but they all had the same basic premise: someone taking an action for a reason that left Jarvis completely lost as to whether the person who’d taken the action had been a good person or a bad one.

Mr. Linville’s words came back to him. _It’s time to grow up, and start seeing the world in shades of grey._

It appeared the clear-cut morality he’d been taught from childhood was very, very wrong.

Col. Phillips smirked. ‘And the Tesseract?’

Jarvis was confused. What was the Tesseract?

Mr. Stark, of course, seemed to know. ‘Well, from what we’ve been able to learn, its function depends greatly on what it’s plugged into, such as it were. HYDRA used it to create weapons that could split atoms. I plugged it into a generator and the thing began operating at approximately 1000 times its usual capacity.’ Mr. Stark frowned. ‘We did discover, however,’ he held his hand out and Jarvis gave him the next file, ‘that its natural state has it transporting objects through space.’ He handed the file to Col. Phillips.

The hard-nosed man opened the file and quickly read it. His already hard expression became even more severe. ‘So the Red Skull is likely not as dead as Rogers reported him to be.’

‘Probably not.’

Jarvis swallowed.

***

Howard wasn’t surprised that Phillips wanted to come back to New York to look at the Tesseract himself. He knew his five houseguests would give the Colonel a bit of a pause, if only because they were one of the most mismatched groups Howard had ever laid eyes on. They were a picture of the world that Howard hoped would come one day.

A world where skin colour, class, age, and religion meant nothing.

***

 **New York**  
Alisa sat in the communal living room with the others.

To incite a change, all it took was a little push. While a lot of things didn’t matter, erasing prejudice allowed societies to move forward. Unfortunately, and as something Neo would’ve thought of when he told Howard Stark about Wakanda, racial prejudice would be at an all-time high.

Having enhanced being marketed towards the masses, perhaps of darker skin tones – and Howard had already proven skin colour meant nothing to him – this would likely be mitigated. It was rather...disappointing what associations people made. Yet, once these prejudices, and those towards the enhanced, were gone, then humanity could truly move forward.

Alisa looked at the telephone.

They were still waiting on the call from Shin and the others to tell them that their prey was biting. Then they could move in and deal with the problem before it became a crisis. From what Greta had seen with the Time Stone, in another 70 years or so, there would be only way to defeat this guy – which went against their training.

Of course, it would’ve been nice to have known sooner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: we check up on Asgard.
> 
> Thank you to Hawkwind1980 who informed me that it was illegal to carry lockpicks unless you're a licensed locksmith. I was not aware of that, but I made good use of it.
> 
> Also, I found the comment from Kuramas_Kat that inspired _A Larger Matter_ : it's in Chapter 9 of Break a Bad Habit.
> 
> And, yes, vibranium has given Howard access to the Wakandan version of the internet.


	13. You Do Not Want War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Asgardians are about to learn a hard lesson in intergalactic diplomacy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the ravens are supposed to be Odin's messengers, but I don't know how they deliver those messages, so I just made it up.

**Asgard**  
Odin stormed through his court, Thor and Loki following behind.

The very idea that any Midgardian would dared have learned sorcery, dared have enhanced themselves, set his blood aflame. Obviously, they had been gone from Midgard from too long and the mortals had gotten ideas about themselves. He would be already down, dealing with them, but Heimdall’s eye was being blocked.

Once Odin got his hands on those mortals, he was going to deal with them himself.

Odin looked up as his ravens flew overhead, delivering a message. _There’s someone here to see you._

Odin looked up, as did his two sons. ‘Who?’ he asked.

_They’re not from any of the nine realms. They say they’re here for a diplomatic visit._

‘Diplomatic?’ Thor asked in confusion.

Odin ignored it and turned on his heel, walking towards the chamber where the ravens had left their visitors. His sons quickly followed. When they entered the chamber, they found three men waiting for them. All three had dark skin and thick dark hair with beards that went down to their chests.

‘Who seeks audience with Odin, King of Asgard?’ Odin demanded.

The man in front smiled, almost seeming amused. ‘An, King of Sumer.’

Odin narrowed his eyes. ‘There is no place called Sumer in all nine realms.’

King An smirked. ‘You do realise those “nine realms” are in actual fact nine planets, and hardly all there is of the universe. Sumer is far outside of your...what did you call it again? Oh, yes – your bifrost.’

‘Have care how you speak,’ Odin ordered. ‘I am the king of all Gods.’

‘You are the king of the Norse Gods,’ King An said. ‘As I am the king of the Sumerian Gods.’ He folded his arms. ‘Only having access to nine planets, I should easily believe you are not aware of this, but it is a common phenomenon for advanced races to go to primitive planets and to be taken for Gods by the locals. They’re primitive and simplistic. That’s the only explanation they can come up with for who you are and how you can do what you can do.’

Odin drew back. ‘What mean you?’

‘You truly think you’re the only “Gods” to human history? Of course not. Long before you even touched the planet, I was worshipped as the Sky Father, King of the Gods, and Lord of the Constellations.’ He clasped a hand on one of the men’s shoulder next to him. ‘My son, Elil, was worshipped as the God of the wind, earth, air, and storms.’ He clasped the other man on the shoulder. ‘And my other son, Enki, was worshipped as the God of water, knowledge, mischief, crafts, and creation.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘That’s not even mentioning the other pantheons of Gods that were worshipped in different times in different places.’

‘The African pantheons,’ Prince Elil said, ‘and the Japanese one.’

Prince Enki threw in his own two cents. ‘The Roman pantheon, the Egyptian, the Mayan, and the Germanic – the Hindu is one of the pantheons still being worshipped.’

‘Pantheon?’ Thor asked, sounding stunned.

King An gave an almost nonchalant shrug. ‘It is a common word across the universe, young Prince, which is used to refer to a collection of individuals who are worshipped as Gods by a primitive people. The pantheon you are a part of is merely one of many.’

Loki, annoyingly, sounded thoughtful as he asked, ‘For what reason, then, would these pantheons leave?’

‘Why did you leave?’ Prince Enki asked.

‘Oh, we didn’t,’ Loki answered with some amusement. ‘We merely didn’t return for a number of centuries.’

Prince Enki nodded. ‘It depends on the people. Some arrive and see the devout reverence to them as Gods to be hilarious. They then proceed to either play a series of practical jokes on the locals or toy with them for a number of years, such as the Aztec Gods. They thought it was hilarious to tell the humans that they would only be appeased with human hearts – until it actually happened.’

Prince Elil gestured. ‘Some, such as the Roman and Greek Gods viewed it for what it was: a responsibility. These people were looking to them for help and guidance. They were like children, looking to someone older and wiser for protection and a code of behaviour, so that is what they gave them.’

‘Children?’ Odin scoffed. ‘They are goats!’

‘Goats?’ King An raised an eyebrow. ‘In what way, may I ask?’

Odin’s lips quirked. ‘They live such short lifespan that are easily cut short. Their concerns are silly and petty and all they think about are themselves. They would hardly eat if not for us.’

The look on King An’s face wiped the grin from Odin’s however. The other king spoke with a strange kind of assurance. ‘There is a distinct benefit to a shorter life. When was the last time any of your people progressed?’

Odin drew back. ‘Asgard is the pinnacle of all worlds.’

‘So...not since you came to consider yourselves Gods then,’ Prince Enki remarked.

Odin didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know that Loki was grinning.

‘Enki!’ His father reprimanded him, but he didn’t appear to be overly serious. He turned back to Odin. ‘In the few centuries you’ve been absent, humanity has grown and expanded. They have evolved. They have developed the means to communicate across the sea. They have developed beyond the horse and cart and now use automobiles. And do you know why they were able to do these things? Because of those short lifespans. Each person wants to be remembered after they die. Some are so determined to do so that they actually create things that people will remember them by.’ He lifted his shoulders. ‘As I said, it is not necessarily the worst thing to have a shorter life. They progress a heck of a lot faster.’

‘You seem informed,’ Loki stated.

Prince Elil smiled. ‘We keep in touch with the Transcendent Souls.’

‘The what?’ Thor asked.

‘You encountered them,’ Prince Enki informed him. ‘Seven of them, anyhow. Those people that knocked you down and then tossed you back here were Transcendent Souls.’

‘They were mortal!’ Odin insisted.

King An scoffed. ‘They transcend death. They would hardly be called mortal, would they?’

Odin glared at them.

‘These Transcendent Souls,’ Loki said. ‘What are they?’

King An looked at him. ‘At around the time human society began, long before you ever set foot in the Norselands, random people began developing powers. They also found themselves falling into what later turned out to be trials. Those who failed the trials lost the powers as quickly as they had gained them.’

‘This happened over several centuries, by the way,’ Prince Elil interjected.

King An continued as if he had said nothing. ‘The final trial, of which only 12 progressed to, took them to the Temple of Transcendence. At this point, their character was certain. All that was required was a test of their wisdom, intelligence, and ingenuity. When they arrived at the temple, they were drawn to the main chamber where they discovered the source of their power.’

‘And that is?’ Odin asked tightly.

King An smirked. ‘The Soul Stone.’

Both Thor and Loki drew back as Odin bellowed. ‘WHAT?!’

King An looked entirely unconcerned. ‘Where did you think such power came from? Where else _could_ it have come from?’

Odin hated to admit it, but he had a point. Electrokinesis, supernatural condition, magic. Where else could Midgardians have gotten such powers but one of the six Infinity Stones – that one in particular. More likely than not, they’d come in contact with it, unaware of what it was they had found.

King An continued. ‘The Soul Stone, it would so appear, does not like to be used. How many, do you suppose, over time, sought out the six Infinity Stones? So, it selected a species and created a defence to protect itself and to ensure none ever held all six. They have never failed in this mission.’

‘Lies!’ Odin snarled. ‘The Soul Stone would never have chosen such an insignificant people to fight such a battle.’ They were little more than goats!

King An narrowed his eyes. ‘Then perhaps there is more to them than you imagine for the Soul Stone to make such a selection. Or, even, perhaps it is their tendency to be underestimated that appealed to the Soul Stone. What better defence than a people who are continuously dismissed?’

The question bothered Odin, but he brushed it aside. Midgard was the lowest of all nine realms. They had a place in the universe and Odin would ensure they remembered it. ‘The people of Midgard will not fancy themselves anything than what they are.’

King An’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do you declare war, then, Odin of Asgard? The rest of the pantheons know our roles in their history. Several of us are even still worshipped on Earth, not merely the Hindu and the Japanese Buddhist pantheons. We all stand in agreement. If you try to attack Terra, you must first go through us. You do not want war.’

Odin smirked. ‘You are in my territory.’

King An smirked right back. ‘You spent so much time flattering yourselves as superiors that you never learned who the others like you were. You do not know what we can do.’

‘You can do nothing. You are trapped here.’

All three smirked now.

They vanished in a flash of light.

***

Thor rushed to the bifrost with his father and his brother.

Loki took one look at the bifrost and nodded to himself. He immediately turned on his heel and walked out of the room. The colour of the bifrost was now dead. What once glowed no longer did so. Heimdall stared at it in utter disbelief. He was prodding the bridge with his staff. The end of his staff was poking right through.

‘Heimdall?’ Odin demanded.

‘The bifrost has lost its power,’ Heimdall said. ‘We may no longer use it to travel between realms.’

King An’s words rang in Thor’s head: _We all stand in agreement. If you try to attack Terra, you must first go through us. You do not want war._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last we'll see of the Asgardians for this story. They do end up going to war with all the other pantheons - and get the pants beaten off of them. 
> 
> So, by the time the 21st Century rolls around Thor is far more humble.


	14. Departure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanos takes the bait.

The phone rang. Miriam answered it.

The familiar voice of Shin came through. _‘Get ready. He’s taken the bait.’_

They both immediately hung up. Miriam turned around to face the others. They immediately stood up. Alisa and Miriam both walked into their respective rooms while the three men waited on them. The two women pulled a case each from under the bed. Inside the cases were outfits more suited to fighting than the dresses they usually wore.

It was time to move.

***

Peg had been keeping an eye on those five since she’d become suspicious of them.

She was hardly going to let Howard’s pigheadedness stop her from doing her job. Howard had recently returned both with Jarvis and Col. Phillips. They’d been in the house all morning. Now, Peg noticed there was quite a bit of movement in the suite that Howard had so foolishly given them. Whatever they were planning, they were about to mobilise.

Some part of Peg knew that Howard was not going to appreciate her rushing in and pushing through his home to confront his houseguests. He’d certainly made no secret of his recent distaste for her, but what she had to do was far more important than his personal feelings. They were up to something and he was too blind to see it.

She really would like to know how he came in contact with these people.

Peg got up and prepared to move.

***

Miriam noticed.

Just as she finished changing, she noticed Carter and her emotions. Of course, she had noticed Carter watching them over the last week while Howard had been in DC, but none of them had paid her too much mind. Determined to be the big hero as she was, she saw enemies anywhere that suited her.

But now she was rushing in, determined that they were doing something sinister, and she really was about to trespass on Howard’s property rather than just go snooping and pick a lock (which was illegal, by the way). If they weren’t gone by the time she got up here, there might be a problem. Greta’s all-encompassing portal would brush over the whole room they happened to be standing in.

‘Stupid bitch,’ Miriam muttered, heading out to join the others.

***

Howard lifted his head as he heard Jarvis calling out. ‘Miss Carter, you can’t just storm in!’

Col. Phillips turned, a scowl on his face. Howard straightened up. They had been talking about what Howard intended to do with the Tesseract. The colonel was perfectly fine with Howard’s proposal on the matter. Now, though, it looked like Carter had actually done some real breaking and entering. Howard set aside the pool cue he’d been using and headed out of the den with Col. Phillips.

Sure enough, Carter was heading straight for the stairs.

‘Carter!’ Phillips barked, startling her into stopping, even if just for a moment. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Carter kept her expression neutral. ‘Howard has houseguests and they’re up to something.’ She said it with such conviction that Howard nearly rolled his eyes. ‘I’m going to find out what!’

Phillips scoffed. ‘They’ve been helping him with work he’s doing for the military, Carter. Hardly anything sinister.’ Howard had already filled him in on the HYDRA mole who was feeding information back to the five upstairs and who Miriam Cassidy was. So Phillips knew exactly why Carter had convinced herself they were nefarious.

Carter glared and continued running. She shot up the stairs.

‘Get back here, Carter!’ Phillips bellowed, the first to bolt after her.

Howard and Jarvis were quick to follow.

‘I apologise, sir,’ Jarvis said. ‘She pushed her way in before I could say anything!’

‘At least you tried this time,’ Howard said.

Carter got to the door to the suite first. She grabbed the handle and tried to turn it. Obviously, their powers had allowed them to see her coming. It was locked. The handle didn’t budge. So, Peg being Peg, she pulled out her gun and shot the lock out. Phillips and Howard both yelled at her, Howard overtaking Phillips and reaching to stop her.

Carter shoved the door open, gun drawn, and stepped into the suite.

The gun was swiftly ripped out of her hand. It flew across the few feet and into Harmon’s hand. ‘That’s breaking and entering, you know,’ he said, amusement and annoyance simultaneously colouring his French accent.

‘What the hell?!’ Peg demanded.

‘I could ask the same of you!’ Phillips snarled, catching up and grabbing her by the arm as Howard stepped aside, into the room. ‘There is no excuse for that jackass behaviour, Carter!’

‘They’re hiding something!’ Carter tried to argue. ‘They were moving around too quickly! They’re about to do something and I want to know what!’

‘That’s their business,’ Howard stated, glaring at her. ‘It doesn’t give you the right to shove into my house and shoot the lock out of a door.’

The look Peg gave him was patronising. How had Howard not noticed that before? She really was an entitled b-word. ‘Oh, please! You wouldn’t care if they were trying to take over the world!’

‘And wouldn’t it be convenient for you if we were?’ Mim asked with a bitter tone. ‘Then you could at least pretend to justify your behaviour.’

Peg turned a glare on her. Before she could say anything, though, Alisa stepped forward.

‘As much as we could stand here and argue all day, we would like to ask you to leave.’ As she said this, Piotr checked his wristwatch.

Phillips tried to pull her back. Howard intended to walk out after them. Jarvis stood aside, just inside the doorway. But Peg was not going to just let it go. She pulled against the old colonel and glared at them, eyes narrowed. ‘Why? What are you doing? Why would you want us to leave now?!’

‘Aw, gee,’ Howard said in a sarcastic tone. ‘Maybe it might be because you shot the lock out and burst in here with a gun. That might have something to do with it.’

Peg glared at him again.

Harmon grunted and tossed the gun across the room into the wastebasket. ‘Just a little.’

Phillips hadn’t eased his grip on her. ‘Come on, Carter. We’re going to go have a little talk.’

‘You don’t understand!’ Carter insisted.

‘What’s to understand?’ Mim asked. ‘You think we’re bad guys because the narrative suits your tiny little world view, so you’re treating us like unconfirmed criminals despite the fact that we haven’t done anything to warrant it.’

Howard had talked to Mim long enough to know the intention of that. It worked too – although that might have had something to do with Mim’s emotional manipulation ability. Peg was startled at the remark to such a point that Phillips was actually able to drag her back, her resistance to his pull gone.

Howard was about to turn when something caught his eye.

Piotr looked at his watch again. ‘Shit.’

A golden circle, made up by God knew what, suddenly appeared on the opposite wall. In the blink of an eye, it seemed to expand and shoot across the room. As it came at them, Howard saw right through it. The other side appeared to be some kind of plains with a river running through on the periphery.

Mim, Harmon, Piotr, Alisa, and Neo turned and watched it come with a calmness that belied whatever it was. Carter may have been on completely the wrong track, but Howard did not want to be around for a battle intended to prevent an extinction-level event. He tried to ricochet back, but the...portal (was that what it was) came too fast and Howard found himself falling back and landing in the grass.

He also heard the others yell in shock.

Then, there was a Japanese accent speaking perfect English. ‘Stupid woman.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, Phillips didn't actually see _how_ Harmon got the gun off of Peg. Nor does he particularly care.


	15. The Ultimate Defence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle begins.
> 
> Howard, Phillips, Jarvis, and Peggy bear witness.

**Unnamed Planet**  
‘See!’ Peg was on her feet in an instant and pointing. ‘I told you!’

Liesel scoffed and had to agree with Hana. ‘Very stupid woman.’

Emil tipped his head back in annoyance. ‘Are you serious? The whole point of coming here was to _avoid_ collateral damage!’

‘Yeah,’ the colonel drawled sarcastically as he pushed himself up. ‘Sounds real sinister, Carter. How evil of them to put out express effort to prevent civilian casualties.’

Carter drew back, affronted. ‘Did you not hear his accent?’

‘Do you know who that is?’ Howard Stark asked, standing over his shell-shocked butler. ‘That’s Emil Weber. He fed the allies information on the Nazis during the war.’

Emil shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Yes, I did.’

Carter looked like she was struggling to come up with an answer to that. Finally she spun on them. ‘What are you doing here? And how did we get here?’

The twelve Transcendent Souls looked around at each other.

‘Do we have time to explain anything?’ Alisa asked.

‘No,’ Hana said.

Emil sighed and lifted a hand. A bubble suddenly formed over Howard, Jarvis, Carter, and Col. Phillips. The old soldier walked over and rapped on the inside of the barrier with his knuckles. ‘What’s the purpose of this?’

‘It’s called “absolute defence”,’ Emil said. ‘Nothing can get through that. Frankly, in the battle that’s about to commence, guns will be useless.’ He looked over. ‘Greta?’

She held up her fingers and counted off. ‘Three, two, one.’

They came over the horizon and from above, streaming in towards the relay device that Shin was currently resting his foot atop of. The Korean shook his head. ‘Like fish to chum.’

‘Yeah,’ Ceren said. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

‘Why are we all still standing here?’ Piotr asked.

‘Good question.’ Neo was the first to move, taking off at super-speed.

***

Phillips wasn’t sure about the force-field, but he had overlooked enough battles in his time.

This particular one, he had to agree, looked way over _their_ heads. The attacking force looked more like a tidal wave than an army. And they were literally obliterating everything in their path as they advanced – trees, grass, water...nothing was spared. Whatever weapons they were using was far beyond anything on earth. Though it went against his instincts as a soldier, Phillips knew they were better to stay where they were.

Three of the twelve stood where they were as the rest ran into the approaching army. It was three of the ones that’d been waiting here already. Phillips couldn’t really blame them for splitting into two groups. Suspicion for those of the axis countries was still rife among the American populace. They’d draw too much attention if they had joined the other five. The three alone who’d stayed were a Japanese woman, a German woman, and a German man.

Carter had fallen back when the German man had released a turrent of red hot flames out of the palms of his hands at the approaching force. Phillips felt the heat from the fire even though it was travelling away from him, and it was clear the German man had full control over it. The Japanese woman did something similar. Instead of fire, though, she used electricity.

The final woman stood, her arms remaining folded and her eyes closed. Wondering what she was doing, Phillips looked around. It seemed every single one of the other nine was fighting back what had to be the hugest army he’d ever seen from every angle. And, despite being grossly outnumbered, they were winning. But his eyesight wasn’t what it used to be so he couldn’t see how they were doing it. All he could see was a mass of soldiers being stopped from advancing.

The German woman suddenly clicked. Phillips looked up as a mass of bodies suddenly hit the force-field protecting them. They all rolled off of the dome Weber had put up and landed on the ground around them. Jarvis nearly jumped out of his skin. Carter stared around incredulously. Stark, on the other hand, looked at the German woman.

‘What’d you do?’ he asked.

‘Stopped their hearts,’ she said.

‘They could do that to anyone!’ Carter hissed.

‘Oh, look,’ the Japanese woman drawled. ‘She’s trying to start the witch hunt early.’

Stark glanced at Carter over his shoulder and rolled his eyes.

The two of them – Stark and Phillips – then proceeded to ignore her. It was now clear to Phillips that if any of these people agreed with the ideas and methods of the axis powers, the allies never would have won the war. Rogers may have been a super-soldier but even he would not be able to survive an instant cardiac arrest as this woman had just done. Her being a typical-looking woman, Rogers likely, if he’d seen her, would have dismissed her.

If he’d made one of his grandiose speeches (which, in Phillips opinion, was a massive waste of time), she could have cut him off with an absentminded snap of her fingers. Phillips didn’t know why Rogers felt the need to make those speeches anyway. Part of him thought the man had gotten off on it, perhaps even viewed it as a display of power or a way to lord something over whoever he was speaking to.

He’d have to ask Mrs. Cassidy if they survived this.

***

Howard watched Mim spin through the air with an unusual dexterity for a woman of her age. One would swear she was in her twenties rather than fifties. As she spun every alien that came near enough ended up falling or crashing, coughing and gasping for air. The emotional manipulation, Howard had known about. Aerokinesis hadn’t crossed his mind though. With the opinion she’d had of Rogers, he wondered if she’d ever had the urge to pull the air from his lungs – even if just to silence him.

If so, it was probably the asthma that stopped her.

Still, Howard wasn’t one to let an opportunity pass him by. His eyes took in everything. Neo’s super-speed was being put to good use. Of course, simple physics would tell you that hitting something living at a high speed was going to have lethal consequences. But he was mixing things up as well. Apparently, Neo could also control plant life and he used it to take quite a few prisoners as well as creating a net that seriously hindered the attacking force’s progress anywhere.

Harmon seemed to have taken control of all the metal around him – especially the weapons and vehicles, and was using them to belt the aliens all over the place. Not far from him, Alisa was spinning around and forcing the earth to her will. The ground rippled and spiked and seemed to itself turn on the alien soldiers trying to get at her. All of this, with only the slightest movements and hand gestures from her.

Piotr was interesting – and a little bit painful. Not only was he not taking any damage at all while he ripped the attacking force around him to shreads. He was also seemingly transmuting the technology the aliens were using into gas or liquid which didn’t even have the decency to either drop to the ground or disperse like they were supposed to. Instead, they multiplied in quantity and either drowned or suffocated the aliens.

Weber, who Howard had briefly met at the tail end of the war when they first met the informant codenamed Horned Owl (which had turned out to be a reference to the fact that real horned owls preyed on the falcons that the Nazis fancied as their mascot), had been a surprise. He not only dissolved any weapons and vehicles the aliens he fought had, but he engaged in physical combat without tiring or recieving any hits.

The blonde woman – an Austrian if he’d identified her accent right – seemed to be standing in the middle of a group of aliens who were seemingly fighting amongst themselves. They were all bleeding heavily but didn’t seem to register it until they dropped dead from the blood loss. Howard wanted to ask, but now wasn’t the time.

The middle eastern woman seemed to be killing her batch of alien attackers with her mind alone – and some help from what seemed like ten large flocks of birds. Of all the powers he was expecting, telekinesis was one of the first he thought of. Avikinesis hadn’t even crossed his mind though. Some part of him wondered what it was like from the perspective of the birds, to have some random human call you to fight with them.

Come to think of it, if this place was uninhabited (as made sense for why they’d picked it) why were there birds?

The last man, the Korean who had the device which was clearly a beacon of some kind, seemed to be having a ball. Not only did he have hydrokinesis, but he also apparently had the ability to turn every piece of machinery these aliens had against them. It looked like a hell of a lot of fun, to be honest. Howard was actually sorry he couldn’t be closer.

‘I’m glad they thought of this,’ Phillips remarked. ‘With the damage they’re doing, I can’t see how they’d have avoided collateral damage any other way.’

‘That would’ve been the point,’ Howard said.

Phillips nodded. ‘Did you know about their powers, Howard?’

‘I knew a bit,’ Howard said. ‘I knew the guys in my house had powers, and I’d been looking into enhanced. Didn’t know much about the others though.’

They both ignored Peg’s demands that he explain himself.

‘Much?’ Phillips asked.

‘I got the feeling they were an organised group from the way they talked,’ Howard said.

‘This,’ Phillips remarked with a wry smile, ‘is definitely organised.’

‘Mad Titan?’ the Japanese woman suddenly said. She then lifted her chin. ‘Fall back.’

The German woman lifted a hand and folded over her thumb and third and fourth fingers. Making a sweeping motion with her hand, nine glowing circles – no, portals – like the one that had transported them here suddenly appeared. All nine of the people who’d run onto the battlefield disappeared from there and hopped out of the portals.’

‘What’s going on?’ Phillips asked.

‘Their boss is arriving,’ Mim said. ‘Looks like we’re about to find out why this fight has to happen in the first place.’

***

The fight had displayed that he was not up against ordinary foes.

These people had powers and were organised into an effective defence. Already, half of his army had fallen to them. As a direct result, he decided to go and retrieve the Infinity Stone for himself. If his servants could not get the job done, they did not deserve the second chance he had given them. And, so, he descended. He opened his own portal – he had observed one of the opposing force doing the same – and stepped out to face the attack force of twelve.

The four under the dome were of no concern to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Piotr has science manipulation (in case it was unclear), which Howard is realising from watching him.
> 
> Emil Weber is actually getting hit. His supernatural condition is just stopping it from hurting him.
> 
> Howard doesn't call Shin's technokinesis as such because I don't think 1940s Earth would have invented that term yet.


	16. Thanos, the Mad Titan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mad Titan arrives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a bit longer.

Jarvis was sitting in a cold sweat as yet another portal opened and a behemoth of an alien walked through. He had purple skin and wore some sort of gold-plated armour. He was really wishing that Miss Carter had just kept her nose out of the issue. If she had, they wouldn’t be here now. Of all things, though, she seemed ignorant. She seemed more angry over anything else. The only consolation was the forcefield, currently protecting them courtesy of Mr. Weber.

Mr. Stark and Col. Phillips stood forward, arms folded and watching as the behemoth of a man surveyed that twelve individuals outside the force-field. He said nothing, though. The twelve who had been fighting said nothing either. It instead seemed to be a stand-off of some sort. And it was doing no good for Jarvis’s blood pressure.

The Japanese woman suddenly spoke up, addessing her allies. ‘His name is Thanos.’ She smirked. ‘He just internally referred to himself in the third person.’

Thanos looked at her. ‘Mind reading.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Mental synchronisation. Far less invasive.’

‘Who are you?’ Thanos asked.

‘We’re the Transcendent Souls,’ the German man said.

Thanos inclined his head.

‘We transcend death,’ the Japanese woman said. ‘Kill us if you will, we’ll just be reborn.’

Thanos sneered. ‘But I imagine that takes time.’

‘We have enough of it,’ the Austrian woman said calmly.

‘We shall see.’ Thanos narrowed his eyes. ‘Where is the Infinity Stone?’

‘There is no Infinity Stone here.’ The Korean man placed his foot on a device. ‘However, we did set this beacon out. It gives off a signal close enough to an Infinity Stone that even the most advanced sensors would be fooled.’

His face twisted into a kind of shocked scowl.

‘Very few people actually actively seek out the Infinity Stones,’ Mrs. Cassidy said. ‘Mostly because the universe is a big place and they could be literally anywhere. People might entertain the notion, but then they decide it’s not worth the effort for something they’ll most likely never do. They’re more likely to die of old age before they get the Stones.’

‘Then there’s people like you,’ Mr. Dubicki said, ‘who doesn’t view that as a problem.’

‘I have time,’ Thanos said.

‘What’s your lifespan?’ Mrs. Cassidy asked.

‘About 3000 years,’ he said dismissively. ‘I’m still young.’

‘And that’s quite a following you’ve got,’ the middle eastern woman remarked. ‘Where do they all come from?’

‘Who cares?’ Miss Carter demanded. ‘If you’re really trying to save people, get on with it!’

‘Impatient, isn’t she?’ the woman they’d called Greta remarked to her allies. She turned back to Thanos. ‘Well?’

Thanos’s face did this odd, and deeply unnerving, smile. ‘I take them in and raise them as my own children.’

The twelve of them looked between each other, clearly suspicious. Mr. Stark and Col. Phillips looked at each other, both looking just as suspicious.

‘From where?’ Mr. Linville asked.

‘From the places I purified. They no longer had parents at the end, so I took them in.’

The Japanese woman’s breath hissed out between her teeth. ‘He killed the parents and then he kidnapped them.’

Jarvis was horrified. Mr. Stark and Col. Phillips’s expressions tightened.

Even Miss Carter gasped.

‘Shut up, Carter!’ Mrs. Cassidy snapped. ‘Why?’ she asked Thanos. ‘What possible reason could you have for killing people and then taking their children. Were they important in some way? Or did you just want brainwashed followers who hung onto your every word and did all of your dirty work for you?’

‘Who cares?’ Carter demanded. ‘The point is—’

Mrs. Cassidy interrupted her. ‘We are not speaking to you. You’re very quick to condemn, Carter, and look where its gotten you. You’re on a planet a million light years from home, standing before what is clearly one of the most dangerous beings in the universe right now, and you clearly think your morality is the right one. Despite the fact that the last time you made a moral determination, you were wrong. Let me tell you something: understanding why you’re fighting someone is far more important than the fight itself. So shut up and listen.’

Miss Carter drew back.

Thanos chuckled. ‘So you really want to know?’

‘Of course,’ Mr. Weber said. ‘We’d hardly ask if we didn’t.’

‘Very well. I will tell you.’ Thanos eyed each of them. ‘I come from a planet called Titan. As I said, we have a lifespan of approximately 3000 years. We also struggled to find effective methods of contraception.’

‘So you would have had a population issue,’ Mr. Botha said.

‘Certainly. There were too many of us for the resources that could be provided to us. I was part of a council whose purpose it was to try and resolve the issue. I came to the conclusion that there was only one answer. By killing half of the entire population, indiscriminately, those resources would be freed up. The problem would be solved and the planet would be saved. I was dismissed for the very suggestion.’

Jarvis was horrified.

Greta sighed. ‘I should be surprised to hear The 50% Method, but I’m not.’

Ms. Sierra scratched her jaw. ‘And that’s what you want the Infinity Stones for? To do this?’

‘It is too late for Titan,’ Thanos said. ‘They all starved and died. But the universe can still be saved.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ Carter insisted.

Mr. Stark turned and looked at her. ‘Peg, you do realise that people debate this same thing as an option back home, right? Except they have another name for it: population control. It’s a controversial topic. Now, zip it.’

Miss Carter went to open her mouth.

‘Shut it!’ Col. Phillips snapped.

The Korean fellow rolled his neck. ‘So, tell me, as your people were dying, how did that resource crisis go? Because if they all starved, as you say, they wouldn’t have all starved at the same time. So, rightfully, the resources should have been freed up for their use.’

Thanos scowled. ‘Of course not, there was also the war to contend with. If they weren’t killed by starvation, they were killed by the aftereffects of the conflict.’

The Austrian woman huffed. ‘I won’t deny there is a resource crisis all over the universe. What I will deny is that the problem is the resource-person ratio.’

Mr. Dubicki shrugged. ‘To take an example, our planet can realisitically sustain 10 billion people. Our global population is roughly about two and a half billion. We still have a resource crisis. We still have entire countries starving, going without clothes and clean water. Deprived of a basic thing like an education. They have no homes or money; no access to education.’

‘The problem,’ Mr. Botha said, ‘isn’t the quantity of the resources. Rather, it’s the _distribution_ of the resources. Smack bang in the middle of those impoverished countries we mentioned? There’s a country that’s monopolising one of the rarest and most valuable metals on Earth. As such, they have far advanced the rest of the planet scientifically and technologically. So it isn’t impoverished, but it ignores the suffering of its neighbours.’ He jabbed a finger at Thanos. ‘ _That_ is where the problem lies: in those who have plenty and yet believe they have no obligation to share it with others; who think they are entitled to what they are given regardless of the means they recieve it through.’

Thanos sneered again. ‘I’ve heard that one before.’

‘I’ve no doubt,’ Greta said. ‘I get the feeling the destruction of your planet has left you with the _need_ to be right. If you’re not right about this, then everything you’ve done – all the people you’ve killed and all the lives you’ve ruined – it was all for nothing. It makes you the bad guy rather than the one saving the universe.’ She shrugged. ‘We all like to think that we’re the good guys. It’s the nature of every sentient being. But do you question yourself?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Those,’ the Japanese woman said, ‘who question their own actions, their motivations, their own perspectives and morality – those are the true “good guys”, if such a phrase may be attributed to anyone. Engaging in such self-reflection allows these people to better themselves.’

Jarvis found himself looking at Miss Carter to gauge her reaction. It was clear now that had been the intention when Mrs. Cassidy gave both Mr. Stark and Miss Carter self-reflection exercises. Only one of them had completed them. Miss Carter hadn’t even bothered. Now her expression was tight and she was glaring at the ground. Her hands were clenched tight as she clearly was deeply affected by these words.

‘I wouldn’t go so far as to call us “good guys”,’ the German chap said. ‘After all, we’re doing this because it’s our duty to do so. We can walk right past suffering and social atrocities without batting an eyelid. Hell, we even reincarnate into places where there’s some kind of social upheaval just to avoid boredom. But it was a good starting point for the selection process.’

‘Your duty?’ Thanos asked. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Do you really think you’re the first one to try and collect all six Infinity Stones?’ Mr. Botha asked. ‘Not by a long shot. And several of those before you even came close. So, the Soul Stone created a defence.’ He lifted a hand and closed it into a fist. In the next instant, thick roots shot out of the ground by Thanos’s feet and clamped onto his left wrist. The alien struggled, but even his massive size couldn’t break or dislodge them. He looked at Mr. Botha, who took that as a cue to continue. ‘That would be us.’

The Japanese woman made a quick gesture with her hand. ‘We were the only ones that passed the trials.’ The shadow Thanos himself cast seemed to jump up, as it if had a mind of its own, and clamp around his right leg. Thanos twisted and tried to yank his leg out. But it was clear the shadow was far stronger.

‘Trials?’ he demanded.

‘Did you really think that powers like this,’ Ms. Sierra stamped a foot and a chunk of earth leapt up and clamped onto Thanos’s other leg, ‘came for free? Of course not. We had to prove we deserved them; that we would not abuse them. We were not the only candidates the Soul Stone tested out, but we were the only ones who passed its trials.’

The middle eastern woman made a gesture with her hands and Thanos’s remaining limb was harshly twisted behind his back. ‘And we are continually tested even now. If any of us were to fall from grace, as the saying goes, the powers would be stripped of us as they were from the others.’

Thanos struggled against his binds. ‘What is your job?’ he demanded harshly.

‘Why,’ Mr. Weber stepped forward, ‘to protect all life in the universe by ensuring no single individual acquires all six Infinity Stones.’

‘Let’s try this one more time.’ Greta turned and began pacing in front of Thanos. ‘You said you intended to kill half the population indiscrininately. Am I right in assuming that means that every second person would be killed, regardless of who they were.’

‘Yes,’ Thanos hissed.

Greta nodded and turned to them. ‘Col. Phillips, you’re a high-ranking member of command in the military, are you not?’

Col. Phillips smiled knowingly, clearly knowing where she was going with this. ‘I am.’

‘What would happen if half of all personnel suddenly indiscriminately,’ she clicked, ‘vanished?’

‘Our attack force would be cut in half,’ Col. Phillips said. ‘Commanders, foot soldiers, trainers, cadets, all gone. Without their leaders, the soldiers would be forced to scramble with no idea where they were going or what their next orders were supposed to be. Without their soldiers or cadets, we’d need new recruits but how many could we get if this’d been done to the entire world? How many able-bodied men would be left? And without the trainers, who the hell is going to train any new recruits we got? And that’s just the army. There’s still the navy and the air force to worry about. Then there’s the command posts. There are certain people in there trained for certain tasks, sometimes only one or two men. You take away those men and the entire military is crippled. Putting it lightly, that would be an utter disaster.’

Greta nodded and turned to the millionaire. ‘Mr. Stark, same question but in regards to your company.’

‘Much the same,’ Mr. Stark said. ‘The main difference being that my employees all have to be replaced when they leave. And, often, there is a single man trained for a particular job, maybe two if we’re lucky. We don’t start training up new guys for the job until they announce their intention to leave. If half of them suddenly disappeared, productivity and profits would all drop. Sure, we could look for new hirees to replace them, but if you’ve done this to the whole planet then every company will be looking so the chances of refilling our ranks would be next to nothing. Our stocks would be dropping and their stocks would be dropping and the economy would be hit so badly that we’d fall into a recession that would make the Great Depession look like a picnic.’

Greta turned back around. ‘There you have it. A military and civilian perspective. Is this still looking like a great plan?’

‘I will do what needs to be done.’

Greta sighed. ‘Emil.’

Mr. Weber stepped forward. ‘Well, seeing as you’re obviously not inclined to change your mind, I’m afriad we have to say goodbye.’

Thanos sneered. ‘Many have tried and failed to kill me. What do you have that they didn’t?’

‘Matter manipulation.’ Emil Weber laid his hand on Thanos’s chest plate.

The Titan dissolved before them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was looking up Greek names - you'll see why in the next installment - and I found the name "Thanos".
> 
> It means "immortal".


	17. The Infinity Stones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Transcendent Souls give Howard and Phillips an explanation, and Peggy as stern talking to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't think of where to go with this, and then HawkWind1980 commented in Chapter 15 and I had "eureka" moment.

**Stark Mansion, Earth**  
The portal opened in one of the living rooms.

Howard Stark stepped through first, leading Jarvis by the arm. The millionaire sat his butler down and turned and watched as Miriam pushed Peg through the portal by the back of the neck. She was followed by Neo, Otto, Emil, Liesel, Harmon, Alisa, Hana, Piotr, Ceren, and Shin. Howard was amused that Otto immediately asked to use the typewriter in the corner and then sat down as soon as Howard consented. Col. Phillips and Greta came out last. Greta closed the portal behind them.

‘Carter,’ Phillips said. ‘Sit.’

Mim didn’t give her a choice in the matter and just pushed her down into a chair away from where Jarvis was recuperating from the unexpected ordeal. Carter’s eyes darted around among the Transcendent Souls, suspicious but also kind of nervous. Phillips turned to Mim. ‘Before I begin on her, what are the Infinity Stones?’

‘Six stones from the dawn of the universe,’ Mim said. ‘There are legends attached to them, of course, but no one really knows how they were created or precisely how powerful they are. We just know they exist. The Soul Stone, after all, is how we came to be how we are. As we said, we transcend death. We can still die, but we’re just reborn.’ She gestured. ‘Greta, about 900 years ago, found the Time Stone. She concealed it and, with the help of some others, built an order around it for the primary purpose of protecting it.’

‘An order,’ Greta said, ‘that still exists to this day.’

‘The Space Stone,’ Piotr said as he handed Jarvis a cup of tea, ‘is located inside the Tesseract.’

‘Inside?’ Howard asked. ‘Is that where its power comes from?’

‘It is,’ Piotr answered.

Phillips rubbed his jaw. ‘So the Red Skull wasn’t killed at all when he picked it up?’

‘No, he wasn’t. He was teleported.’ Liesel threw her hands up. ‘Though where to, we couldn’t tell you. He could be quite literally anywhere in the universe.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ Carter insisted. ‘He’s dead! Steve—’

‘Yes, because Rogers actually understood quantum physics,’ Mim drawled sarcastically. ‘Please! He didn’t even understand normal physics.’

Phillips nodded his head. ‘Could the Red Skull return?’

‘Possibly,’ Otto said from the typewriter, ‘but not very likely.’ He looked up. ‘The rest of the universe is greatly unaware that this solar system has sentient life, mostly because the Earth is surrounded by planets that are uninhabitable. Even if someone did try to take him home, due to his mutations they’d be looking for a red-skinned race. Added onto the fact that, with the kind of man he is, it wouldn’t take long for him to be locked up – either in a prison or a psychiatric facility.’

Phillips nodded, seemingly reassured. Then he turned back on Carter. ‘Now, Carter, you broke into this place, shot a lock out of the door, and got us all dragged across the universe. I better hear a damn good explanation for that jackass behaviour!’

‘I didn’t know what they were doing!’ Carter insisted. ‘How was I supposed to know they were trying to save the universe like that?!’

‘That’s not an explanation,’ Phillips snarled. ‘That’s an excuse.’

‘All she’s got is excuses,’ Hana remarked. ‘There’s currently another one cooking up in her head to the effect that we should have told her what we were doing.’

Phillips scoffed. ‘You wouldn’t have listened even if they had – and you know it. They were going to another planet in order to beat an alien tyrant. You’d have dismissed it as a tall tale.’

‘Besides,’ Howard said, ‘they had no obligation to tell you anything. You’re a federal agent. Your job is to look out for _national_ security. Their job is to stop anyone from getting all six Infinity Stones.’ He frowned. ‘By the way, what happens if someone does get all six Infinity Stones?’

‘They’d gain the power to rewrite the universe to their whim,’ Neo said.

Howard nodded. ‘So he would have been able to wipe out half of all life in the universe if he’d gotten the Stones?’

‘Just like that.’ Emil snapped his fingers.

Phillips went on. ‘They’ve clearly been doing this a while. It was none of your business, Carter, and you had no right to go nosing in.’

Carter’s expression tightened. She was clearly still fishing for something to say, but there was no answer. She couldn’t claim it was ridiculous. She couldn’t claim she had needed to know, because she hadn’t. She couldn’t claim that they hadn’t known what they were doing, because they had, or that they’d needed her for anything, because they hadn’t. She didn’t have a leg to stand on.

‘Let’s be clear,’ Mim said. ‘You believe that the ends justifies the means, which is why you felt so confident barging in. You were so certain you were right that it never occurred to you that you could be wrong. And that’s your problem right there.’ She paused. ‘Actually, no. You decided we were the bad guys the moment you realised I didn’t worship the ground Steve Rogers walked on.’

Carter scowled. ‘You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.’

‘There’s no guaruntee that Rogers is dead,’ Ceren stated. ‘Peak human condition is very common amongst the enhanced community. People with this enhancement have been frozen and then uncovered years later. They were perfectly fine when they were thawed out. If anything, they were just cryonically suspended.’

Phillips lifted his eyebrows. ‘Then I guess we better start up a reintergration program for when Rogers is eventually extracted.’

‘Also, you might want to start downplaying the legend,’ Mim suggested. ‘If Rogers wakes up to that, trust me, it’ll go straight to his head.’

‘And you would know?’ Carter snapped.

‘Yes, actually,’ Phillips said. ‘This woman taught him throughout most of his childhood. You knew him for scarecely over a year. Just cause you and Rogers had something going on there it doesn’t mean you knew him as well as you think you did.’

‘This isn’t about my feelings!’ Carter snapped.

‘Bull.’ Greta didn’t even raise her voice, but she had everyone’s attention. ‘My cardiology manipulation has a side-effect of allowing me to read a person’s heart – or rather, their emotional centre. This is exactly about your feelings.’ She frowned. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that despite what you seem to think. Those emotions don’t make us weak. They make us human. By denying it...well, what are you trying to posit yourself as by denying it? Subhuman? Metahuman? Something else altogether?’

Carter drew back. She fished around for a moment.

‘It’s obvious,’ Hana went on, ‘that you’re used to people dismissing you because you’re a woman, but that isn’t the case here. Or did you forget that there were six women fighting on that battlefield? To us, gender is nothing but the reproductive organs you happened to be born with.’

‘When has Phillips ever dismissed you for being “a woman”?’ Mim asked. ‘Howard? Jarvis? Have they ever?’

Carter looked on the verge of desperation now.

‘Of course not,’ Liesel said. ‘Which would indicate you’re denying this is about your feelings because you feel it weakens your stance significantly. I’ll be honest – it does. But it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You are, though. You’re throwing excuse after excuse after excuse around to avoid admitting that you are emotionally compromised when it comes to Rogers. That’s what your suspicions of us are really all about, though.’

‘As soon as I said he was a brat,’ Mim said, ‘you reacted emotionally. Your arguments against me were all lines from the propaganda surrounding Captain America. They weren’t geniune beliefs about him. Then you decided we had to be up to something nefarious because, that way, you could more easily dismiss everything I said about him as me being manipulative and discredit me. So you made up suspicions with literally nothing to show for it but your own confirmation bias.’ She walked around and stood in front of her. ‘I am a teacher, Miss Carter. I do not play favourites. It would be bad for my students if I were to do so.’ She leaned on the arms of the chair she’d pushed Carter into. ‘Remember that exercise I gave you? I gave a similar one to Howard. He did it and he realised what I knew practically from the first time I saw you.’

‘What’s that?’ Peg’s voice came out significantly less forceful than it had been before.

‘You view people as resources; as tools to be used rather than people in their own right.’ She nodded her head. ‘Aside from that girl at the diner, you don’t have a single friend. You dragged a domestic servant into your cases – which is illegal, by the way – and demanded a civilian CEO cater to your every whim which, in this case, was getting you more information on the Wakanda issue than you had been cleared for.’

‘Like I said to Thanos,’ Greta said. ‘We all like to think we’re the good guys. And it’s true. We like to _think_ so. But with so many conflicting opinions, it’s just not possible. You need to learn to step back and critically analyse your own motivations, like we do. You want to be a good guy? Stop sneaking around behind peoples backs and acting like you’re the be-all-end-all of morality.’

Carter’s eyes narrowed. ‘You wasted your time talking to him!’

‘Well, yes,’ Shin said. ‘Sometimes you can talk the other guy down. In fact, that’s the first thing you should try to do. Sure, it didn’t work today but it has worked in the past. Sure, we engaged in combat with the army, but they were all soldiers who had orders to kill anyone who got in the way of them and the Infinity Stone. Thanos, on the other hand, came for a face-to-face confrontation. If we attacked him instantly, it not only goes against the code of conduct we all long-ago agreed to, it would also be abusing our powers.’

Carter was silent for a moment. ‘And your powers? How do we know what you consider “abusing” them?’

Harmon looked amused. ‘Fear mongering will get you nowhere, Miss Carter.’ He inclined his head.

‘You’re just going right back to where you started.’ Ceren waved a hand. ‘Let me tell you something about your methods: If you’re not making mistakes, you’re doing it wrong. If you don’t fix your mistakes, you’re really doing it wrong. If you don’t admit to your mistakes, you’re not doing it at all.’

‘Are you aware of the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy?’ Harmon asked.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Carter was taken aback.

‘You claim that the enhanced are a threat and you take “preventive measures”,’ Alisa made air quotes, ‘against them. As a result, you make them feel threatened. This makes them react defensively, and you turn them into the threat you were afraid they’d become.’

In the next instant, Neo super-sped across the room. He came to a stop, his face mere inches from Carter’s. Carter’s fist shot up in a reflexive punch. Neo caught her wrist before she made contact. ‘Like that,’ he said. Point made, he released her and stepped back, ignoring the amused looks he was getting from nearly everyone else in the room.

‘A perfect example of this,’ Liesel said, ‘would be the Wolverine.’

‘Who’s the Wolverine?’ Phillips asked.

‘Logan,’ Mim answered. ‘He’d be in military records as James Howlett. He’s a Canadian mutant who was born sometime in the first half of the 19th century. He has a healing factor that’s slowed down his ageing and rendered him virtually immortal. And that’s just his primary mutation. The point is that Logan is generally a quiet guy. He keeps to himself and minds his own business.’

‘Until you make him feel threatened, or a child feel threatened in his presence,’ Piotr added. ‘Then he’s ferocious, and if you don’t back off he _will_ hurt you.’

Phillips nodded. ‘But only once he feels the threat?’

‘Exactly,’ Greta said.

Phillips was rubbing his jaw again. ‘This guy’s military?’

‘Mostly during wartime,’ Otto said, pulling the sheet he’d been typing on from the typewriter. ‘He should be drifting about now.’ He waved the paper he had at the air. ‘If you want to recruit him, I recommend coming straight to the point and making it clear he’ll have a steady income. In the meantime, I have a list here of top HYDRA operatives and bases.’

Carter sat there, looking shell-shocked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to SuperpowersWiki (science manipulation page) for Ceren's quote.


	18. Farewells

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time for the Transcendent Souls to go home.
> 
> Howard and Phillips begin paving the way for the future of the enhanced.

Liesel was getting ready to head back to Austria, on a private plane with Emil and Greta who would be dropped off in Germany, courtesy of Howard Stark. Seeing as she hadn’t really brought anything with her, all she needed to do was freshen up a bit and eat some of the food. Neo and Otto were already gone – Otta having to return to his position of a mole in HYDRA. Ceren, Shin, and Hana would leave after they did. The Transcendent Souls from the allied nations were (not including Neo, of course) not in quite such a hurry to leave the US.

Liesel looked up from the sandwich she was eating. ‘Hello, Howard.’

The millionaire had wandered in. ‘Hi. I just thought you should know the plane’s scheduled to take off in two hours.’

‘Thank you.’ She grinned at him. ‘Was there something else?’

‘Yeah,’ Howard said. ‘I was wondering what your powers are. During the fight, you seemed to just be standing there. I was thinking some form of perception control.’

‘And you’d be right,’ Liesel said. ‘I can produce illusions and suppress the sensation of pain, both in myself and in others.’

Howard nodded. ‘Well, that makes a lot more sense.’

Liesel laughed.

***

Phillips sat back behind his desk.

His first step was finding out who had an odd fixation with the enhanced. Or, perhaps the better phrase would be “who had an obsession with creating living weapons”. Then he made sure to present his proposal when they were all...otherwise occupied while he presented the idea of a specialised strike force. It helped having Stark in his corner.  
And the United Nations had enthusiastically thrown their support behind the idea.

Stark had not only gotten these particular men distracted, but he’d helped manouvre Phillips into the position of commander of this soon-to-be unit of men. Phillips had then established a strict set of checks and balances to ensure that nobody could just decide to take over and go nuts on a power trip. When all that was completed, he began his recruiting.

Howlett, of course, was the first one. Just like Otto Fabian had said, he was drifting. Phillips had looked up his military records while Stark helped track him down. His name was common enough that it was easy to see why no one had caught onto his apparent immortality yet. So far, the only places where photos were included in the file was the world wars. While it looked like the same man (and it was), many people would just brush it off as “father and son”.

Funny thing was, Howlett had clearly done nothing to falsify any records, which was more than you could say for Rogers. Things like his date of birth were listed as the date and the month but no year. He’s struck a line through it, rather than putting in an outright lie. That wouldn’t draw too much attention, to be honest.

Several men had actually had no idea what year they were born in, and only a vague idea. It was far more common than you would think. In such instances, they were told to put a line through the birth year rather than risk accidentally lying. Howlett had obviously viewed this as a great way to avoid answering awkward questions.

But he did know when he was born. Phillips knew that because he’d managed to dig up Howlett’s Civil War records – the same handwriting had pointed to it being the same man – and he’d listed his year of birth as 1832. 

All that was to say that Howlett would be predisposed towards being suspicious. He was old enough to know every trick people might try, and, judging from a lot of incident reports he got from the records, he’d had enough people coveting his power to know to watch his back. The Transcendent Souls he’d spoken to on the matter confirmed that Howlett would suspect an ulterior motive in the arrangement.

So, when Phillips tracked him down and handed him the proposal, he half-expected the guy not to bother showing up. But a couple of days later, Howlett drove up to the fort and agreed. His reasoning was simple. Even if Phillips was just looking for a super-powered strike-team, he had enough checks and balances in place for Howlett to be reasonably comfortable.

It also helped that Miriam Cassidy had said to mention that the Transcendent Souls had pointed him in Howlett’s direction. Howlett had reacted to this with a raised eyebrow and then asked him to name the American one. That stood to reason too. If someone tried to use that to get the jump on him, they’d probably not only get the woman’s name wrong but her gender too. Maybe that was what really tipped the scales.

There were other mutants and enhanced, like Howlett, already in the military. They were more or less transferred, despite the arguments and protests of some of their commanding officers, who liked the advantage they offered. But the brass had come to the conclusion that the program Phillips was instigating was far appropriate for such people.

There were enough of them to have at least three commands.

The main problem was that most of them, with only a few exceptions, were combatants. And that was understandable. They came into the military for security, and the most secure position for an enhanced was on the battlefield. There were a small handful of them who’d gone into non-combatant positions. In order to keep them in the program, which most, if not all, of them seemed keen on, he needed more intel and support people.

Upon telling Stark this, Stark had secured those people. They needed to be trained up, of course, but they were the numbers he needed. Phillips had a strong feeling that soon they’d have enough men to outfit a brand new division in the army.

And Stark wasn’t doing so bad on the civilian front either.

***

Miriam and John stood with Howard on the sidelines as they watched the presentation.

The people oohed and ahhed over the enhanced. The people they’d picked out including a fellow technopath Shin had known – which was considerably less scary for people when it was put into layman’s terms, especially considering his technopathy was based entirely around communicating with machines. At worst, it was considered “weird”. His name was Henry. There was also an enhanced, by the name of Larry, with something called evil sense, or the ability to sense ill intent in other people. People who protested to him were viewed with suspicion without him saying a word.

Those two were the starting point.

‘You and Phillips have started something great here, Howard,’ Mim said.

Howard nodded slowly. ‘Exactly how common are enhanced people?’

Mim knew what he meant. He knew how common they were on Earth, but she asked anyway. ‘In the entire universe?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, not all races do it,’ Mim said. ‘We don’t know precisely how many do or what the common factor is, but the reaction we get when other races find out that what we can do is not typical for our species is enough to tell us that. As such, we cannot predict what the pattern is supposed to be. We tend to just assume that what we see happening before us is normal.’

They watched as Larry turned his head and nodded the security guards to a particular man, who, it became apparent when he was confronts, was hiding a handgun on his person. The resulting crowd reaction was really something to behold. Especially as the man screamed out his xenophobic slurs as he was carted off. Howard expected to be asked for an interview later.

Mim spoke up again.

‘It’s like I told Phillips,’ she said. ‘Wartime is the safest time for members of the enhanced community. When we’re fighting a war, nobody cares about your powers when those very powers are taking down the enemy. In peacetime, though, these sort of attacks are commonplace. Sometimes a mutant or an enhanced will even start a war just to get that security.’

And that was the saddest thing Howard had ever heard.

***

When the X-Men formed under Charles Xavier, a contract was signed that these people would be recognised as non-military combatants to fight off threats beyond the scope of regular authority, such as the Brotherhood of Mutants. The American military also agreed, as the school was on American land, that all students who were not born on American soil would be allowed studying visas from when they were brought to this sanctuary and non-American adults could apply for various visas which would allow them to stay and avoid the anti-mutant persecution which was still active in many of the countries they hailed from.

The contract was signed by Charles Xavier and Chester Phillips.

In 1976, when Col. William Styker had the Wolverine captured and experimented on – something which was quickly picked up by Howard’s prodigy son, Tony. Not only did the aged and formidable General Chester Phillips come down on him like an anvil, but so did the entire American public. This man had been serving and protecting North America for the better part of the last century and a half. He was not a lab rat to be experimented on.

Just ten years later, when a teenaged Tony Stark discovered a Dr. Xander Rice performing experiments on mutant children, which they’d created via artificial insemination – including the Wolverine’s own daughter – and reported it to his father, the entire world seemed to comes crashing down on these people. Wolverine himself led the attack on the facility.

The children were relocated to Xavier’s school, and Wolverine took a leave of absense in order to look after the daughter he never knew he had.

After centuries and centuries of prosecution, the enhanced finally lived in a world that considered them to be _people_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more chapters to go. ;)


	19. Captain Carol Danvers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the mid-90s, Captain Marvel was born.

**1996**  
Major Carol Danvers had woken up in a medical hospital.

At first, she’d been disoriented. She didn’t quite remember what had happened. Then, slowly, it came back to her. Especially when she ended up crushing a pen with the slightest touch. Upon learning this, the medical staff had handed her a document which detailed a sub-division of the military that was officially called SHDF, or Super-Human Defence Force. It was affectionately nicknamed, though, Phillips’ Men.

The document not only detailed its founding, by one Col. Chester Phillips in 1948, with the help of Howard Stark, but it also explained that all enhanced military personnel were immediately transferred into this division. There were several incidents in the document detailing why. The document also set out the checks and balances in place so no commander could gain complete control over the enhanced under their jurisdiction.

Carol asked to speak with someone from SHDF.

The man who came to speak to her was technically on a leave of absence. But the bulk of them were on assignment and he was one of the few able to come and talk to her. Srgt. Howlett was a short and stocky guy with a healing factor that allowed him to look in his 30s when he was well over 150. He’d been in SHDF since its inception. As such, he understood it deeply. He explained to her that there were still people who still sought to create living weapons – using the experiences of himself and his daughter as an example – so it was more for the safety of the enhanced that the transfer to enacted swiftly than anything else.

Carol would like to say she was in no danger of such exploitation, but she couldn’t be sure.

Especially with some of the sleazes she took orders from.

Her piloting days weren’t over as she feared they might be. They had enhanced from all walks of the military – army, navy, and air force. When she arrived at HQ, she would be put through a series of tests designed to determine what her new powers were. Then a training program would be developed for her, which would teach her to control them. Once that was complete, she’d be assigned to a team and given a position according to her rank.

The official SHDF website would then add her name to their database.

There was really nothing to complain about so Carol went through the process. She also ended up returning to New York City and to a compound that had been designed and rented to SHDF by Stark Industries. While they hadn’t really made weapons since the Vietnam War, and turned more to technology, due to the robotically-inclined heir’s enthusiasm for that division of the company, they did still uphold their defence contracts. One of those was the support and providing resources for the military division they had helped found.

The scans that Carol went through were very medical in nature. It turned out that not only did Carol had super-human strength, but she also had the capacity for energy projection and self-sustained flight. The only person who had self-sustianed flight in quite the same way was a civilian PI called Jessica Jones. So the military contracted her to teach Carol how to control her flight.

The energy manipulation was a bit more difficult. When Carol tried the first time, she’d made a crater in the training room floor. Carol expected to be billed for it, but she was assured that these sort of accidents happened all the time with trainees. The Starks footed the bill and Carol worked on learning to control it. If others in the Force could, so could she.

It took months but she finally got it.

With her powers controlled, she was put onto Team Delta.

Just in time for the Kree to attack. It turned out the explosion which had killed most of her unit and given her her powers was from a crashed Kree ship. They’d come to retrieve it, of course, but they were also conquerers. They wanted Earth – or Terra, as they called it. And it was up to Carol and her new team to stop them. It was a hard-won victory, but they won that victory nethertheless.

Carol, being the only one who could move swiftly through the air, had to deal the final blow.

She was shortly thereafter promoted to Captain and given the moniker of Captain Marvel.

Then she met the Starks. She had known of Tony Stark, of course. There was hardly a man, woman, or child alive who did not know of the child prodigy turned young futurist. She had attended Command School with Tony Stark’s best friend, James Rhodes. Rhodey had been one of the better soldiers in their class and they’d become friends. As such, she’d heard all about the young genius.

Tony Stark himself was open and cheeky. ‘So you’re Carol Danvers?’ he asked with a wide attractive grin. ‘Rhodey told me you kick ass.’

Carol had smiled. ‘And he told me how you like girls.’

Tony had thrown his head back and laughed. ‘I wouldn’t worry if I were you. Rhodey’s got a thing for you.’

And he didn’t flirt with her. She wasn’t sure if Rhodey really did have a thing for her, but Tony certainly seemed to believe so. It wasn’t something Carol had ever really thought of. As it was, though, Carol ignored it. She instead found herself invited to quite a few gatherings at the Stark mansion along with Rhodey, Happy Hogan, and Pepper Potts.

In that time, she found that a lot of what Tony showed to the public was just a mask. It wasn’t who he really was. Who he really was happened to be a far cry from the loud, obnoxious, womanising narcissist that he presented to the public. He was really compassionate, insecure, and really kind of adorkable. Carol had been surprised at the insecurity she glimpsed of in him. Then she came to realise that his entire life the public had been deciding who he was for him, before he even got the chance to work it out himself. So Tony Stark played the part he’d been assigned.

That would give anyone issues.

So, over the years, Carol became good friends with these people. She was one of the first to volunteer in 2008, when Tony went missing in Afghanistan – an attempt by a former business partner of Howard’s to begin a hostile takeover of Stark Industries. The oaf had just not counted on the determination and ruthlessness of Pepper Potts.

When Iron Man and War Machine entered the scene, Carol was one of the first to know about it.

Then came the day when she was called to HQ.

‘Captain Danvers,’ her commanding officer stated. ‘You are one of the most decorated soldiers in SHDF. You have also displayed, within your own team, natural leadership qualities. As you know, the current brass for SHDF is about to be cycled. Due to your service records, we are informing you that you are being considered for a position in command.’

***

‘That’s great,’ Rhodey told her when she told him the following day. ‘I’ve got to agree with them, Carol. You are a great leader. You look out for your men and women and you understand them all. And no one’s afraid to come and talk to you about a problem.’

Carol smiled. ‘Thanks, James,’ she said. ‘I don’t know, though.’ She frowned. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Sure.’

‘In SHDF, there’s a lot of talk about Peggy Carter, but no one seems to know who she was. She’s just someone that people get compared to when they stuff up and refuse to acknowledge it. Hell, they said part of the reason I was being considered was the fact that I wouldn’t “do a Peggy Carter”. Do you know anything about it?’

‘No,’ Rhodey said, frowning. ‘I’ve never even heard the name before.’

Tony’s AI, JARVIS suddenly spoke up from above. ‘If I may, Captain Danvers, Colonel Rhodes.’

They both looked up.

‘Margaret, or Peggy, Carter was the true woman that the fictional Betty Carver was based on,’ JARVIS explained. ‘She was a member of the SOE and, during the war, transferred to the SSR. She was even a friend of the older Mr. Stark – or so she led him to believe. However, she was quick to judge and condemn and viewed those with more power than her – be it intellectual or enhanced – as loose cannons, barring Captain America.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Carol asked. ‘And what happened to her?’

‘The enhanced that alerted the elder Mr. Stark and Col. Phillips to the existence of their sub-branch of humans first appeared in 1948. One of them was a former schoolteacher of Mr. Rogers. She described him in unfavourable terms. Miss Carter responded by inventing a series of conspiracy theories around this woman and her associates. Miss Carter, it seemed, was an advocate of “the ends justifies the means”. She forced entry into at least two locked doors in the Stark Mansion and broke into the mansion prior to an unknown incident.’

‘Unknown?’ Rhodey asked.

‘Sir’s father told him this much but not what the actual incident itself was,’ JARVIS explained. ‘All we do know is that Miss Carter left the Mansion. She was sued for the damages she inflicted onto the building and, upon the collapse of the SSR, transferred to the CIA. While there, she came into contact with an Agent called Nicholas J. Fury. The man was a POC and felt he was being held back because of it. Miss Carter felt the same on account of her gender, but she’d apparently been brought to the conclusion that this mindset was mostly in her head. As such, Agent Fury was far more active in…I suppose one could say “bending the rules” or flat-out breaking them. She was an accessory to these actions.’

‘Was it in her head?’ Carol asked.

‘When she was associating with the elder Mr. Stark and the SSR, greatly so,’ JARVIS answered. ‘I will not deny that the bulk of her career occurred in time periods where sexism was far more prevaleant. But she had proven herself just as capable as a man in the first year after the war, so the attitude was gone from the men she worked with. Neither the elder Mr. Stark, nor my namesake ever engaged in this sort of small mindedness, nor had Col. Phillips, yet she behaved as if everyone disregarded her on account of being a woman. It was only after the SSR collapsed that she lived it.’

‘So what happened to her and her friend?’ Rhodey asked.

‘Agent Fury was eventually arrested and sent to serve a life sentence in Federal Prison.’ A sarcastic tone entered his voice. ‘It appears not only did he try to exert control over the enhanced but he was greatly careless of the lives lost during his power-play. As an accessory in this – as she had the same views on the enhanced as him – Miss Carter was deported back to England.’

‘So saying someone would “go Peggy Carter” would be to say they’d become like a fascist dictator,’ Carol surmised. ‘They try to control the actions of others and suppress those they can’t control?’

Rhodey nodded. ‘Looks that way. Kinda makes me wonder what that school teacher had to say on Cap.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, it's Carol. It's my own personal theory that at the end of the upcoming Captain Marvel movie, Carol's going to leave for space. (Fury's in it, so he's probably going to be a factor in that decision). Which, of course, means that Carol would bump into Tony in space and the two of them join forces to work out how to beat Thanos before returning to earth.
> 
> That's my headcannon and I'm sticking to it unless proven wrong.
> 
> Here, though, she is going to be needed for the final chapter. ;)


	20. Welcome to the 21st Century

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve Rogers is found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told this from Carol's perspective because I wanted it done from an _actual leader's_ perspective.

Steve Rogers was found in 2012.

He was immediately shipped to SHDF HQ. Instead of waking up in a room put on to look like the 1940s. He woke up in a sterile hospital wing. Instead of being looked up to in awe and praised at every turn, he was treated exactly the same as every other enhanced in the Force. He was scanned, he went through psychological tests, and his records were thoroughly checked. When it was discovered that he’d completed scarcely a week of boot camp, he was put straight into basic training of the army division.

The integration program that Phillips and the Starks had helped put together for him was immediately put into effect.

Carol studied Rogers carefully.

When Rogers had first been uncovered, Tony had sent the SHDF a list of the words Miriam Cassidy had used to describe the face behind Captain America in 1948. Upon their examination of him, the psych team had agreed with her. That, Maj. Dr. Burnett had said, just went to show that the late Mrs. Cassidy was good at her job.

Rogers was utterly convinced that they were trying to bully him. He had an inflated sense of his own self-importance, and he thought they were trying to hold him back. Carol had even overheard him calling her “a girl” and she was nearly 40. She had two choices here. She could either dismiss it as just the way he thought, coming from the 1940s, or she could address the behaviour.

If she ignored it, it would just keep going.

She chose to put him through a re-integration designed to correct his behaviour. A week later, she sat in her office, looking at the files in front of her. The words “dismissive” and “unattentive” seemed to jump out at her. She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She had, of course, heard the idiom that you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks but, rightfully, Rogers was in his early to mid twenties. He should have still had the capacity to learn new things.

Tony’s words, as repeated to him by his father, rang in her ears. _‘He didn’t want to learn, so he refused to even listen.’_

And that was clearly what was going on here.

There was a knock on her door. ‘Come,’ she called.

The door opened and Logan walked in, cigar in between his teeth. ‘You wanted to see me, Cap?’

Logan often split his time between the SHDF and the X-Men. While he was career military, his time with the X-Men, whilst he was raising Laura, had left him with an attachment to them too. He thought a great deal of the children there, and the ideals Xavier was pushing – now on an international scale – were ones he could get behind; ones he sincerely believed in. Added to that, Laura had decided to stay behind, when she was grown, and become an X-Man herself. So if the Professor asked for help, Logan would give it.

‘Look at this.’ Carol handed him the file.

Logan took it. He spent a few moments reading through, then he huffed. ‘Doesn’t really surprise me. Guy’s a condescending dickhead. Just the other day, I had to resist the urge to throw him out a window because he saw Laura and he decided to “have a word” with me about her clothes.’

Carol twisted her lips. Laura, in her teen years, had discovered a preference for belly tops. She especially liked ones that were skin-tight and, therefore, couldn’t snag on anything. It hardly surprised her that Rogers had taken one look at the girl and engaged in the victim-blaming typical to that culture. ‘So what did you say to him?’

‘Told him only neo-Nazis engaged in victim-blaming and walked off.’

Carol snorted. Not exactly true, but it would have had the desired effect. ‘Well, I’m going to be giving him a dressing down. I want you here.’

‘What for?’ Logan asked.

‘Srgt, you were the first man Col. Phillips pulled in. You were the first man hand-picked by him to be in the military’s special enhanced defence force.’

‘To be fair, he was pointed in my direction.’

‘True enough, but you are still ten times the super-soldier Rogers could ever hope to be.’

‘Good luck gettin’ him to admit that,’ Logan said. ‘He’s still insistin’ on getting his own team. He thinks he can lead a team when he can’t even control his power.’

‘Yeah, really.’ Carol rubbed the bridge of her nose. ‘Kind of makes me wonder how much worse he’d be if they hadn’t downplayed the legend.’

‘Probably not as bad right now, if Cassidy could be believed,’ Logan said. ‘Because he’d have people kissin’ his ass. He’d already have been given a team, despite how fuckin’ stupid the idea is, and he’d be shit-stirrin’ a lot less because of it.’

‘You really think people here would do that?’ Carol asked.

‘Some of ‘em would, yeah, if they had that opinion of him’ Logan said. ‘You’d be surprised how stupid people in general can be.’

‘Somehow, I think I would.’

There was another knock on the door. Carol straightened up and wiped away all signs of her negative sentiment towards the man that was about to enter her office. Logan walked around, file still in his hand, and stood at her back. He folded his hands behind his back, file still in his grip which led Carol to the conclusion that he was holding a wrist behind his back.

‘Come,’ Carol said.

The door opened and Rogers walked in. ‘You called for me.’

Carol gave him a pointed look, which seemed to go over his head. The idiot couldn’t even get the basics of military ettiquite and he called himself a soldier! ‘Yes, _Cadet_ Rogers.’

Rogers visibly ground his teeth. Evidently, he hadn’t actually been aware that his “Captain” title was just a stage name and he was technically still a cadet. He’d, in fact, been affronted at the notion. But he’d finally given up trying to correct people because no one paid any mind to him. But he still made his displeasure at the notion visually known.

‘Your integration officer informs me that you have not been taking the program seriously,’ Carol told him. ‘Would you care to explain?’

Rogers’ back immediately went up. ‘It’s a waste of time. I don’t need to be sitting in a classroom. I need to be out there, saving people!’

‘Cadet, you can barely control your own strength as it is,’ Carol stated firmly. ‘And you show no desire to do so either.’

Rogers opened his mouth before she even finished her sentence.

‘Don’t talk over the top of yer commanding officer, you rude little punk!’ Logan snarled.

Rogers drew back, shocked. It was probably more from being called a rude little punk over anything else.

Carol went on. ‘You consistently break the training equipment. While it is not unusual for new trainees to do so, they learn to control the force and pressure they exert so as not to do this. You, on the other hand, have been here three months and there are no improvements. How, then, can you be trusted when dealing with civilians and public property?’

Rogers scowled. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘That did not answer my question,’ Carol said. ‘I asked how you could be trusted with the public if you cannot even moderate your strength in a controlled environment.’

Rogers tried shooting her a disapproving look. ‘I am Captain America.’

‘A propaganda piece for World War 2 designed around your face,’ Carol stated. ‘If we were to use a Captain America, we’d need someone who understood the politics of the modern world. You refuse to even take on social norms.’

‘You can’t replace me!’ Rogers insisted.

Carol glanced down at the sheet in front of her. One quote jumped out of her. _Not stupid. Just lazy._ ‘Yes,’ she said calmly. ‘We can.’

***

Maybe that was what set him off.

In fact, Carol was positive that was what set him off. Miriam Cassidy’s statements had left the impression that Rogers had a messiah complex. The psych eval only backed this up. He was convinced he was chosen because he was the only candidate possible; the One Good Man. It was all very dramatic and irritating.

“Delusional” was the word Carol preferred.

He was the hero of his own little story and had to be publically declared a rogue.

‘He’s tearing through downtown Manhattan, heading for Hell’s Kitchen,’ Tony Stark reported from Stark Tower. ‘The Defenders have been notified. From what JARVIS could tell, he went out looking for people to save. He couldn’t find his old uniform so he just grabbed clothes in the red, white, and blue.’

‘Casualty rates?’ War Machine asked.

‘Over 50 confirmed, but the numbers are going to keep on growing,’ JARVIS stated. ‘He seems to have caught petty thieves in the act and severely wounded them, and then he moved on. He is currently involved in a high speed chase through the streets.’

‘Does he even have a driver’s licence?’ Logan grumbled.

‘No,’ Tony and JARVIS answered at the same time.

Carol scowled. ‘When he inevitably crashes that thing, I have no doubt he’ll just walk away from it and leave the devastation behind him.’

Logan pulled his cigar out of his mouth. ‘Want me to run ahead?’

Carol nodded. She turned as Logan took off. ‘Does Professor X have the retraints ready?’

The technician nodded. ‘And he’s got Nightcrawler on standby, ready to slap them on Rogers.’

‘Good. You all have your orders.’ That said, Carol ran through HQ, came to the top of the base and launched herself into the air.

Logan was already tearing away on the motorbike. Logan’s enhanced senses and lightning-quick reflexes meant he could tear through even a crowded city street at top speed with minimal risk of endangering innocent bystanders. He didn’t like doing it, because the risk was still there, but he could do it.

Carol didn’t like him doing it either. But the fact that he remembered that not all people were as durable as him had always been something she’d admired. It was so easy for humans to forget that other people couldn’t do what they found easy. But Logan never forgot it. And that automatically made him miles better than Rogers could ever hope to be.  
They sailed through the city, the evidence of Rogers’ negligence plain for all to see. Debris and rubble and bloodied and broken bodies lying all over. Those who were still standing cheered when they saw the Wolverine and Captain Marvel. Some even screamed to them for Rogers’ blood.

JARVIS’s voice came through her earpiece. ‘The Defenders have engaged. Cadet Rogers is temporarily stopped.’

Temporarily, but he would now view them as the enemy. None of the Defenders would go down easily either. That gave them the time to get there and get at them. Rogers was too pigheaded to admit defeat – and he had more testosterone than common sense, a big part of why it was decided he was better off not knowing the identity of the Winter Soldier.  
Logan arrived first, of course. Just as Cage had thrown Rogers into a wall. Rogers immediately went to roll to his feet, covered in blood as he was. From the looks of the Defenders, he’d barely laid a finger on them. There was only slight bruising on Daredevil and Iron Fist. Then again, one had super-human strength, one was practically invulnerable, and the other two were quick on their feet.

There must have been no people in the building, and this was Hell’s Kitchen. Logan rolled and threw his motorbike right into Rogers. Logan landed on his feet. Carol hovered above. Jess saw her and flew upwards. She came to hover right next to her. 

‘Tony called us up,’ she said. ‘So what’s the deal?’

‘A messiah complex and a bruised ego,’ Carol said. ‘I’ll be glad to be rid of him.’

Rogers pushed the motorbike off of him and got to his feet again. He looked slightly unfocused but that quickly cleared. Carol was intimately acquainted with how quickly a concussion passed when one possessed super-human strength. (And how long it took to pass when one didn’t.) He glared at Logan and the others and then seemed to notice Jess was missing. His eyes skated around before he realised where they were.

He glared up at them, and then decided to throw the motorbike up at them.

 _Stupid boy._ Carol extended out one hand. She felt the familiar warm hum of the energy pass down her arm and pushed it out through her hand. The blast shot through the motorbike and continued on to hit Rogers straight in the face. The super-human flew back into the wall again, leaving an even bigger dent.

He slid to the ground. An unenhanced would probably have died, but Carol knew the extent of Rogers’ power. Sure enough, he just got back up again. Though he had to be seeing double – this time his eyes stayed unfocused – he shifted into a fighting stance. ‘I could do this all day,’ he bragged. His speech was clearly slurred.

‘Logan,’ Carol said.

‘My pleasure.’ Logan shot forward. _SNIKT!_ In the next instant, Rogers was on the ground. Blood pooled around his leg and he tried to get up. This time, though, his legs wouldn’t cooperate with him. He flopped about on the ruined pavement. Logan put a boot onto his chest and waited for Rogers to glare up for him.

‘That pain in your thigh, right there,’ Logan said. ‘The docs will call that a massive hematoma, from a femoral artery psudo-aneurism. In a regular joe, it’d be a fatal wound. In you, though, it’ll just take quite a while to heal. You can forget about gettin’ up by yerself for a couple of hours.’

Carol and Jess came down for a landing.

Carol walked over. ‘And you can forget about a military career, Rogers. You just went on a rampage through the city for no clear reason. You cost the city too much in both property and human life. As far as I can tell, all this was because you didn’t agree with me telling you that we could pop someone else in the Captain America suit.’

‘I am Captain America,’ Rogers insisted, voice laced with pain.

‘Your old geography teacher left statements as to your personality,’ Carol said. ‘She made it clear that you tried to punch your way out of disagreements. Today, you proved her right.’ Carol’s eyes narrowed. She ignored the shock on Steve Rogers’ face. ‘Your tendency of trying to punch your way out of any and all disagreements you have is a bad habit. And it’s high time to break it.’

Kurt Wagner teleported in and slapped the retraints on Rogers.

***

(A new enhanced, with a background on international politics, was given the title of Captain America. Over the years, the title would be passed down from one candidate to another. Rogers was kept in a psychiatric hospital for some time before being discharged with a government-provided carer and a laundry list of sedative medications he was required to take that were designed specifically to cull his more dangerous impulses.)

(The Winter Soldier, who had been ousted years ago by Otto Fabian was eventually caught and, with the help of several telepaths, de-brainwashed. A letter that Miriam Cassidy had written for him years ago was the first step to his rehabilitation.)

(HYDRA was weasled out and destroyed from the inside: the result of seeds planted by Otto.)

(The Red Skull never returned, but Tony Stark made the first steps towards intergalactic relations for Earth.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bit where Logan knocks Rogers down and explains what he's done is derived from a comic strip I have, where Logan does pretty much the same thing except with his boot instead of his claws.
> 
> I didn't manage to get a reference to Peggy into this because it's Carol's perspective and, to her, Peggy is just a footnote in history. But we all know what happened anyway.


End file.
